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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27206500">Lost to Time</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/laniew1/pseuds/laniew1'>laniew1</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 18:26:51</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>45,015</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27206500</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/laniew1/pseuds/laniew1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Time is not unchangeable if someone has the time, patience and drive to make sure history doesn’t repeat itself. Even if it means removing oneself from the equation.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Max Evans/Kyle Valenti, Michael Guerin/Alex Manes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>168</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>238</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Roswell New Mexico ▶ Michael Guerin / Alex Manes</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Lost to Time 1/?</b><br/>
</p><p>Later, no one will know exactly when it was that Alex went missing.</p><p>Not Kyle who spent the most time with him which burns some gaping hate filled hole in Michael’s chest, not Forrest who’d gone from being attached to Alex’s arm to suddenly being busy with material he’d been trying to get access to having fallen unexpectedly into his lap.</p><p>Not Max who didn’t care one way or another about Alex, not Isobel who did but wasn’t going to seek the other man out if he didn’t seek her out first.</p><p>Not Maria who Alex would smile at and talk at but not talk <i>to</i> and Maria could certainly tell the difference and wasn’t rushing to have Alex fake at still being her friend.</p><p>Not Liz who was always busy with Rosa when she wasn’t busy with Max.</p><p>And certainly not Michael who has been avoiding any and all places that he was sure to run into Alex with Forrest’s hand wrapped around his arm; so he doesn’t have to hear Alex ask how things with Maria are going and tilt his head and expect an answer.</p><p>The first three times it had happened Michael had thought Alex was fucking with him, was just waiting for Michael to admit that things with Maria weren’t all sunshine and roses and that easy was only easy until Maria started actually <i>wanting</i> things from him.</p><p>His heart, his love, his secrets.</p><p>All things he should have been able to give if things with <i>Alex</i> were as done as he was telling them all they were.</p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p><p>Max is in uniform, Michael hasn’t asked but he thinks Kyle was the one who smoothed things over with his mom. Enough that Max got to go back to work, but he’s working overnights and bad shifts which Max just tells them is his penance for daring to try and die on them and Cameron is out of town again.</p><p>“Can we talk?” he asks and Michael can tell he’s silently judging the beer that Michael has barely even touched in front of him. He hadn’t even added any acetone to it, it’s literally <i>just</i> beer which doesn’t even do anything much for him.</p><p>“Sure Maxwell,” Michael drawls, he picks up his beer, and throws Maria a smirk which she rolls her eyes at even as they dart between him and Max.</p><p>Probably wondering if a fight is coming, if it is Michael won’t be the start of it.</p><p>“Talked to Alex recently?” Max asks when they’re settled at a table a far enough distance from everyone else that no one can possibly hear what is being said.</p><p>“No,” Michael says, he’s fairly confident he’s managed to keep the bitterness out of his voice but Max’s side eye tells him he was not completely successful. “Not in a week or so.”</p><p>Max nods, like he was expecting that answer.</p><p>“He’s been hanging out with Forrest Long,” Michael manages to say without sneering at Forrest’s name. He wants to, he wants to scream to the rooftops that Alex is his and punch Forrest in his smug fucking face.</p><p>He doesn’t, because as he has been so viciously been reminded, numerous times over the last several weeks.</p><p>Alex <i>isn’t</i> his. Not anymore.</p><p>He made his choice.</p><p>“I’ve already talked to Forrest,” Max says, he taps his fingers against the table and doesn’t make eye contact with Michael. “He hasn’t seen him in a couple days, probably about the time you last saw him.”</p><p>There’s a twinge of something like foreboding running down Michael’s back and he leans forward.</p><p>“He’s okay… right?” he asks.</p><p>“It’s probably nothing,” Max says, and there’s a tone to his voice and Michael can <i>tell</i> that something is desperately wrong because of the way that Max won’t make eye contact with him.</p><p>“Max…” he starts and he doesn’t know what to say, what to ask him. He wants to demand Max tell him that Alex is fine. Wants to pull out his phone and call Alex, who won’t answer because it’ll be Michael calling, but if someone else called he would.</p><p>“He was supposed to meet Kyle two days ago,” Max says, still drumming his fingers on the table, still <i>not</i> making eye contact with him.</p><p>“Max…”</p><p>“We’re not sure when he went missing, you and Forrest were the last ones to see him and no one has seen him since.”</p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p><p>He tries his house first, car gone, the house is dark. He thinks about going up to it, breaking down a door and forcing himself inside but Alex has his house secured like Fort Knox likely is and all breaking down a door is going to do is set off an alarm.</p><p>He contemplates peeking through the windows like a creeper but that’s even <i>more</i> likely to set off an alarm or at the very least have a nosy neighbor calling the Sheriff. Chances are if Max is asking questions of him that she or someone else has already checked the house.</p><p>Chances are <i>Kyle</i> has already checked the house because Alex against all sanity considers Kyle a friend now and he probably knows how to get in without setting off alarms or getting himself shot.</p><p>He’d scoff and scowl but he’s too busy hunching over the steering wheel and tapping his fingers in an erratic rhythm to do that.</p><p>There’s really no other places Alex would go, if he’s not at home and not at the cabin that he spends some time at, and not with Kyle or Forrest then there’s something really wrong.</p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p><p>“Do we even know anything?” Michael asks when he finally manages to catch up with Max at home. Max looks exhausted, he’s not adjusted to the shift change at all and he’s bearing it with more grace that Michael thinks he’d normally give him credit for.</p><p>“Like what?” Max asks, he’s not looking at him, is digging through the refrigerator for a bottle of water and apparently a Tupperware container of leftovers.</p><p>“I don’t know, was there a fight? Do we know where he went missing from?” Michael asks, he sits down at the table, huffing an annoyed sigh that Max doesn’t respond to. He also doesn’t offer him any food or drink, just pops the container in the microwave and opens the bottle of water, taking a long drink though Michael is sure he’s using <i>that</i> as a tactic to avoid actually talking to him.</p><p>“There was nothing out of place at his house, we had Kyle walk it to make sure, not at the cabin either. The last time he disabled the alarms at either was a full 72 hours before Kyle even became aware he was missing,” Max shrugs, the microwave goes off and Max stirs whatever is in it and pops it back in. It smells really good, just serving to remind Michael’s stomach that it’s been at least five hours since he ate a quick lunch.</p><p>“He came to see me on Monday, at like nine or so,” Michael taps his fingers against the table. “We argued but he seemed okay.”</p><p>“Yeah, I did a quiet search and Forrest said something about him having to go on some Air Force recruiting thing, someone called him out due to issues with his prosthetic; no one on base had a name and it apparently went through all the appropriate channels and didn’t raise any flags until Kyle and Forrest raised them.”</p><p>Max sits across from him at the table but keeps his arms wrapped around his container of food like he knows Michael is going to try and snatch it from him if his concentration wavers.</p><p>“So we really don’t even know how long it’s been,” Michael says.</p><p>“At least 72 hours, could be longer, could be shorter,” Max shrugs, “we don’t really know one way or another.”</p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p><p>Forrest is waiting outside his Airstream when he finally leaves Max’s.</p><p>He’d checked a couple of other places, hoping that maybe Alex had really just lost track of time for about 3 days.</p><p>He’s not there, he’s not anywhere that Michael can find him.</p><p>“Nazi guy,” he says when Forrest stands to greet him.</p><p>“I really wish you wouldn’t call me that,” Forrest mutters, he drags a hand through his hair and looks annoyed. But honestly that’s his default facial expression whenever they have to deal with each other.</p><p>“What are you doing here?” he asks, he sprawls in the chair across from him, watches as Forrest sits back down and starts digging through his bag.</p><p>Their areas of interest don’t normally intersect, there shouldn’t be anything that Forrest could have found that would be remotely interesting to him.</p><p>But Michael hasn’t been able to find Alex yet, so he can give the other guy a few minutes of his time.</p><p>“I’m not crazy,” Forrest says as he pulls a folder out of his bag. He’s looking at him with an earnestly sincere expression on his face so Michael tries to look supportive, and not like a guy that thinks studying Nazi’s probably makes the crazy thing up for debate.</p><p>“Sure,” he drawls, he wishes he had a beer in hand, or at least <i>something</i> in hand.</p><p>“And I don’t even normally go in on Wednesday’s, but I was bored and decided what the hell…”</p><p>“Why don’t you just spit it out,” Michael suggests, “it’s getting late, some of us need our beauty sleep.”</p><p>Forrest rolls his eyes and then shoves the folder at him, “I’m not crazy,” he says again.</p><p>Michael doesn’t say anything and just flips the folder open, better to look at what insanity is inside then discreetly go inside and call Max for an assist.</p><p>Except he opens the folder and there’s a print out of a newspaper article.</p><p>“That’s not…” he shakes his head and closes the folder, shoving it back at Forrest.</p><p>“It’s not possible right?” Forrest asks, “he’s got some like great uncle that he’s named after, right?”</p><p>Michael doesn’t respond, isn’t even sure really what <i>to</i> respond.</p><p>It can’t be Alex, not in that picture, not standing next to the dead great uncle that Michael is pretty sure is responsible for his mom being locked up in Caulfield in the first place.</p><p>Not only because that great uncle is <i>dead</i> but also because the year of that newspaper is 1948 and Michael is fairly positive that Alex is neither immortal nor a time traveler, just like he’s fairly sure that if Jenna Cameron were Max <i>would</i> have mentioned it.</p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p><p>Max has got his flashlight in hand, this is the fourth place that the Sheriff has sent him to look. Law of probability says that at some point they’re going to find Jenna and they’re going to find Mimi. They might not be together, but they’re both going to be found or heads or going to roll.</p><p>He’s not expecting to find anything, it’s <i>only</i> the fourth site, he’s figuring there’s at least three of four more places where he’ll have to push away cobwebs and dust and mentally figure out when the last time he had any shots were and whether his boosters are up to date so when the Sheriff asks he knows what to say.</p><p>He’s startled when he comes across the locked room, and he snaps the lock open without thinking about it.</p><p>Locked rooms are never good, he’d probably have remembered that if he hadn’t been trying to remember if the last booster was the previous year or two years before that.</p><p>“Holy fuck,” he mutters and fumbles for his radio.</p><p>“I found them,” he says after he keys the radio several times and the stunned silence is a reflection of his own state of mind at the moment.</p><p>“Go again?” he hears and the Sheriff’s voice doesn’t normally sound that gruff, but it’s been a wearing time. What with Mimi going missing and then Jenna right after.</p><p>“I found them, out at the old Hersher house,” Max says.</p><p>He gets the click that says the Sheriff copied and understood. He kneels next to the pod where Jenna is slumbering peacefully, face calm, hair in her normal braid down the one side.</p><p>He runs a hand over the top, it’s cool to touch, which is surprising if only because Mimi and Jenna have only been missing for two weeks tops, and it normally takes <i>months</i> if not longer for the units to get this cold.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p><p>
  <a id="cutid1-end" name="cutid1-end"></a>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Lost to Time 2/?</b><br/>
</p><p>
  <i>When Jenna finds Nora she’s in the basement, squatting in front of one of the pods and muttering to herself.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Is Alex coming?” Nora asks when she notices her standing there.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“I think he was still talking to Tripp outside,” Jenna says, they’re up to something. The two men have had heads bent close together talking or arguing for the last couple of days.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“They’re up to something,” Nora says, she sighs heavily.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Mimi and I were talking about it, we haven’t figure out what yet though,” Jenna says and Nora just looks at her with an expression on her face that Jenna takes to mean that <b>Nora</b> knows exactly what they’re up to and is waiting for the three of them to be locked up in their little pod prisons waiting for time to pass so she can undo it.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“He means to try and change the future,” Nora say.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Isn’t that the whole point of us going into the pods? So you guys can try and mitigate whatever damage has already been caused by us being here?”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Nora shrugs, she comes smoothly to her feet, starts to drag a hand through her hair then seems to realize that she’s got dirt on her hands.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Some damage has already been done, “ she looks troubled with a side of distressed, “I’m honestly not even sure this is going to work, the pods aren’t designed for you and I don’t even know what type of world we’re sending you into at this rate.”</i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p><p>Jenna knows she’s awake, not <i>awake</i> awake, but she’s conscious and aware even though to the outside world it definitely still looks like she’s not.</p><p>It gives her time to figure out that she’s in the hospital, can hear the beeping of machines that probably don’t need to be hooked up to her but are also someone’s way of covering their asses. She doesn’t really relax until she hears the soft drawl of Max’s voice, then Kyle’s responding one.</p><p>They’re safe, they’re awake and where they’re supposed to be.</p><p>“So they’re fine?” Max is asking and Kyle doesn’t actually respond so she assumes he’s nodding his head.</p><p>“I’ve been going through Nora’s notes and she said there’d be a period of unawareness while their bodies fought of the effects of the pods…” Kyle starts.</p><p>“They were ice cold,” Max says softly. It takes a minute for Kyle to respond, long enough that Jenna has finally focused on what he said and the fact that he knew Nora’s name, that… he <i>shouldn’t</i> know that.</p><p>“I know, I don’t,” she can feel the soft press of Kyle’s hand against her ankle, testing her reflexes, reassuring himself that she’s <i>there</i>, she doesn’t know. “I can’t explain it,” he finally says and she can hear the uneasiness in his voice.</p><p>She doesn’t actually know what she’s hearing, there’s soft rustling, there’s sighs and whispers that she can’t hear or make out.</p><p>“Nora said she was on her way,” Max says softly, “she wants us to wait until she gets here to question them about what happened.”</p><p>“You know that’s not going to go over well with my dad,” Kyle says and the laugh that she hears come from Max is soft and fond.</p><p>If Jenna could stiffen and gasp, make any sort of movement or sound, she would, she’s sure wherever they have Mimi stashed she would as well.</p><p>Jenna doesn’t know how to process any of that.</p><p>Max had never even known Nora, he hadn’t even been at Caulfield when Alex, Michael and Kyle had found her locked up there.</p><p>Jim Valenti is Kyle’s dad, and he’s been dead for longer than Jenna has been in Roswell.</p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p><p>The room is dark and quiet when she finally convinces her eyes to open, swallowing thickly and coughing lightly.</p><p>There’s a gentle hand on the side of her face and the press of a straw between her lips. She drinks greedily until it’s pulled away and she makes a noise that sounds annoyed to her own ears.</p><p>“No more until Kyle comes back in,” she hears, that’s Liz’s voice sounding amused and when she manages to demand her eyes open, she can see the other woman sitting next to her.</p><p>Liz looks exhausted and Jenna doesn’t actually know the current date, so she has no idea how long they’ve been missing. Liz doesn’t look vastly more aged then normal, so probably just a couple days, maybe a few weeks… she doesn’t even know if they talked about a plan on when they’d be woken up.</p><p>She turns her head slightly and she can see Mimi in the bed to her left, Maria sitting next to her touching her mother’s arm.</p><p>She turns her head to the right and there’s nothing but wall, Alex is male she didn’t figure they would keep them in the same room, except they all went missing under the same circumstances so she would have thought they’d try and contain them as much as possible.</p><p>“Hey,” Kyle’s voice is warm when he pushes the door open, Max is right behind him in uniform. “You’re awake finally.”</p><p>“How long?” she gets out, her voice sounds rough even to her own ears and she feels like she could close her eyes and go back to sleep that’s how draining getting just those two little words out is.</p><p>“We found the pods about five days ago,” Max stands at the end of her bed, thumbs hooked through his belt as he watches Kyle go through his checks.</p><p>“Am I the last one to wake up?” she mutters, Mimi’s eyes aren’t open and Alex isn’t in the room so she has no clue how he’s doing but he’s also super stubborn so probably has been up and about since right after they were found.</p><p>“Mimi woke up for a few minutes about an hour ago, so we figured you would be soon,” Kyle says absently, he’s moved next to Max, marking something in her chart as she watches him.</p><p>“What about Alex?” she asks, she can’t believe she has to actually <i>ask</i>, Kyle has professed multiple times, mostly without any prompting at all, that he’s Alex’s best friend, he’s probably spent most of his time wherever they have Alex laid up.</p><p>“Who?” Kyle asks her and his expression is absolutely blank, no sign of recognition at the name and Jenna’s stomach drops.</p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p><p>Jenna is in the middle of having a panic attack when Nora comes in, her appearance only makes things worse in Jenna’s mind.</p><p>Nora looking just a fraction of time older than the last time that Jenna <i>saw</i> her which was over 70 fucking years earlier.</p><p>She should be dead.</p><p>“I told you not to talk to her,” she sounds annoyed.</p><p>“She talked to us first,” Liz says defensively, “but now she’s talking about some guy that was supposed to be there and she’s acting like we’re supposed to <i>know</i> him.”</p><p>“Oh Jenna,” Nora says, she sighs heavily and the door opens behind her admitting two more people into the room, Michael Guerin looking clean cut and healthy and a man that Jenna has only seen in pictures behind the Sheriff’s desk or in Jesse Manes’ files.</p><p>“Where Alex?” Jenna manages to say, she can’t even focus on the dead man standing next to his son. “Nora, where’s Alex?”</p><p>“He did it,” Mimi says softly, Jenna turns her head to look at her and Mimi looks so soft and sad. “I knew he was up to something, all those secret conversations with Tripp…”</p><p>Nora looks at them, looks at the room filled with people who have no clue who they’re talking about, Jenna knows she’s trying to figure out how to lie to them.</p><p>“Please don’t lie to us,” she says, begs really and Nora’s face just hardens. Jenna doesn’t really want to know what’s happened over the intervening years to make Nora who always was bright and friendly and mostly kind to them look like that.</p><p>“Can I have a few minutes with them?” she asks and there’s a cacophony of voices expressing their disapproval.</p><p>“Please,” she says and there’s a hint of force to her voice. The Sheriff nods once.</p><p>“Few minutes,” he says, voice gruff, “but then we’ve got questions as well.”</p><p>Nora nods and the room starts to clear out.</p><p>“You as well Maria,” Nora says and Maria looks like she’s going to fight to stay by her mom’s side.</p><p>“Go on now,” Mimi says softly, Jenna can see her squeezing Maria’s hand and then she follows the group out, the door closing with a soft thump behind her.</p><p>Nora sits on the edge of her bed, touches her leg gently, looks over at Mimi then back at her.</p><p>“Keep in mind that I know just about as much as you, Louise said there was something wrong,” she starts, her mouth twists, “about a month after we put you in the pods she told me to go check on them, that there was something wrong, off, she couldn’t articulate it past that.”</p><p>Jenna breathes, tries not to let the panic that feels like it’s going to engulf her overwhelm her completely.</p><p>“The pod we put Alex in was gone, I’m not even sure how Tripp managed to move it but maybe he brought someone else into his confidence…”</p><p>“Or maybe he woke Alex up and they moved it together,” Mimi offers and Nora shrugs slightly. “You know they were planning something; we should have been expecting this.”</p><p>“I was expecting them to have a plan for Tripp to shut down Shepherd, to eliminate Caulfield and the other sites, to help us protect ourselves and the children… we couldn’t have expected this,” Nora says.</p><p>Jenna remembers multiple nights hidden away in that little house walking in on Alex and Tripp with heads bent together as Alex and Tripp were putting together detailed plans on how Tripp was going to get Caulfield shut down and keep it shut down.</p><p>She should have known that Alex wouldn’t leave it being done completely up to Tripp though.</p><p>“You should have,” Mimi’s voice is sharp, and Jenna knows she’s not the only one looking at her in surprise.</p><p>“That boy has carried the weight and blame of everything done to you and your families since the moment he found out it was happening. He promised to put an end to it, to make it safe for Michael, Isobel and Max to have lives here. For you and Louise and any other survivors that found their way to here to have their own lives…”</p><p>“By erasing his entire existence?” Nora says, “because that’s what he’s done, Shepherd was done, Caulfield was rubble, we were <i>safe</i>.”</p><p>“How are you even here, Nora?” Jenna asks, “you should be…” She can’t say dead, Nora should have been dead of old age, yet she looks not much older than Jim Valenti had.</p><p>“Two pods showed up several years after Tripp vanished with Alex’s pod; there was a note and a suggestion that maybe Louise and I should use them so the children wouldn’t wake up alone. Louise balked at going back in one, she had a life and a little family that she didn’t want to be parted with even as she wanted to be there when her daughter woke up. She’d go in for a couple of years here and there I guess, so she could try and extend her life long enough that she could at least <i>see</i> her daughter before she passed,” Nora looks down at her hands twisting in her lap.</p><p>“I woke up a few weeks before the children did, collected them and took them home with me,” Nora twists her head to look at the closed door. Like she can see Michael and Max and Isobel on the other side of the door.</p><p>“How do you know there’s no Alex, that he…” Jenna swallows roughly, she can feel the truth of Nora’s words, of her belief.</p><p>“I waited, I knew that at some point the Manes’ would have to show back in Roswell, so when Jesse left after school I waited for him to come back and he finally did… with only his three sons in tow and no wife and no Alex.”</p><p>“Mindy left him,” Mimi says and Nora nods once, “and you think Tripp and Alex had something to do with it?”</p><p>“I don’t know how they did it, things should have tried to rebound if it was able, but in the end Mindy and Jesse only had three boys, Flint is the youngest now and there doesn’t seem to be any Alex.”</p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <a id="cutid1-end" name="cutid1-end"></a>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Lost to Time 3/?</b><br/>
</p><p>
  <i>”I don’t like this plan at all,” Tripp says and Alex doesn’t say anything. There’s really nothing to say. If Tripp is <b>really</b> as opposed to the plan as he professes to be then Alex will wake up alongside Jenna and Mimi and nothing will have changed.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Tripp will still be dead, Nora will still be dead. He will have saved them from none of the pain and heart ache that he knows he can save them from.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>If this works…</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“You could have a future with Nora,” Alex says softly.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>They could be a family, and Michael could have a future with Maria without his past with Alex continually hanging over their heads. He wants them to be happy and safe from his family. This is how he makes sure that happens.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“I could,” Tripp nods, “but you’re my family, blood sticks by blood. If that means that eventually I can be with Nora then it’ll happen when it happens but not because I abandon my family when they need me.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i></i>
</p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p><p>“What do you think they’re talking about in there?” Max asks and Michael shrugs, he’s actually not even sure why he’s there. But his mom had dragged him along behind her like the force of nature she’s been his entire life.</p><p>They’ll find out eventually, but he doesn’t expect she’s going to tell them anything other then what they already know or she feels that she needs them to know until she’s good and ready to share with them.</p><p>He can tell by the expression on the Sheriff’s face that he expects this as well.</p><p>“Probably whoever this mystery guy is that Jenna and Mimi were talking about,” Kyle says.</p><p>“Jenna was expecting there to be another pod with theirs,” Max says for Michael’s benefit.</p><p>“I thought only Jenna and Mimi were the ones missing?” he asks, they’ve certainly been the only ones that the Sheriff had anyone looking for.</p><p>“Time is a funny thing,” his mom says from the doorway to Jenna and Mimi’s room. She looks fragile in a way that he hasn’t seen since he was a young boy and she spent way too long waiting for some mystery ex to reappear.</p><p>Not his dad, she’s always been brutally honest that his dad was dead, but someone that she’d met and fallen for and who’d been snatched away by family obligations.</p><p>Michael thinks if he ever meets this guy that broke his mom’s heart that he’s going to have Isobel fry his brain, he’d do it himself but the mental stuff has never been his forte.</p><p>“They need a few minutes,” his mom says when Kyle makes to go back in the room and do his doctor stuff. He stares at her and she stares back and Kyle finally huffs and goes to slouch near the wall by Max, Michael knows if he focuses on them that he’ll see Max linking their pinky’s together, the only sign of affection he’ll show while he’s in uniform.</p><p>His dad wouldn’t care, Max is the only one that really cares about that.</p><p>“So should I be filing another missing person report?” the Sheriff asks and his mom shakes her head. The Sheriff arches an eyebrow at her and his mom folds her arms over her chest.</p><p>“I told you that time was a funny thing,” she says, “every little thing done in the past has a consequence in the future, and apparently it doesn’t take much of any sort of nudging for it to go in a completely different direction then it should have.”</p><p> </p>
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  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p><p>It’s two in the morning when he stumbles into the kitchen heading for the coffee maker. The lights are low but he can still see his mom sitting at the table, a box of faded old photos open in front of her.</p><p>The coffee is already made so he heads there before he sits down in the chair nearest her.</p><p>“I heard you still moving around,” she says by way of explanation, she has a photo between her fingers, it looks tattered and worn, obviously one that she’s taken out of hiding and held in a similar fashion before many times.</p><p>“Got a couple of projects with due dates coming up,” Michael shrugs. “Do my best work under pressure though so it’ll be fine.”</p><p>She just looks at him, and he cocks his head to the side. She looks tired, she should be sleeping but he’s certainly not going to say those words out loud.</p><p>Instead he reaches out and drags some of photos scattered across the table to him, scooping them up in his hand and flipping through them.</p><p>He’s not seen any of these. He can see Jenna and Mimi in several, his aunt Louise who died right after they came out of their pods and two men that have similar features and <i>look</i> familiar.</p><p>Like he’s seen at least the one on the right before, he doesn’t try and force it. His brain doesn’t like him forcing memories that aren’t at the forefront and he’s really not up for a nosebleed at 2 am when he’d like to get a couple more hours of work done before he heads to bed and if he gets a nosebleed his mom’ll turn on ‘mom mode’ and he’ll end up getting shuffled off to bed instead.</p><p>“That’s Alex and Tripp,” his mom says, tilting her head toward the photo he still has in his hands.</p><p>“Jenna’s mystery Alex,” he says and she nods her head once.</p><p>“Tripp is his…” her mouth twists as she thinks, “great uncle, great great uncle? I’m not really sure where Alex fell into Tripp’s timeline.”</p><p>“He looks familiar,” Michael says, because he kind of feels like it needs saying and he tries to hide as little as possible from his mom so she doesn’t have any reason to try and figure out if he’s hiding something. He came out as bi when he was nineteen in college strictly because she could tell something had happened and looked so disappointed that he was keeping something from her.</p><p>He still doesn’t think she was expecting him to blurt it out like that if her expression was anything to go by.</p><p>“Tripp?” she asks slowly and he shakes his head.</p><p>“No, Jenna’s Alex,” he says and she just stares at him, mouth slightly agape as he sits the photo down, shoulders hunching in slightly. “He kind of looks like this computer guy at work, probably not him though that guys like my age; these pictures were taken, when? Back in 47? He’d be like going on ancient by this point.”</p><p>“They had the pod that Alex was in,” Nora says softly, she can’t seem to look away from the pictures and there’s something that looks like tentative bit of hope in her eyes when she <i>does</i> finally look up at him. “And they found two pods that they sent to Louise and I, they could have…” her voice drops off and she sighs.</p><p>“Were things that bad for him?” Michael asks, he can’t even imagine being so sure that his existence wasn’t necessary to anyone that he would feel like just ceasing to be would be the best overall solution.</p><p>“His relationship with his father was pretty volatile from what little I was able to decipher from things he told his uncle, and…” her face twists a bit, he’s <i>positive</i> she’s going to try and lie to him, or figure out a way to change the subject.</p><p>“He used to tell me about you,” she says gently, “how beautiful and smart and… he said he was the absolute worst thing that ever happened to you, that if he could do it all over again he would stay away and let you be with Maria and happy and…”</p><p>“Maria,” Michael says faintly disbelieving and a bit disturbed to boot. “I was dating <i>Maria</i>?”</p><p>His mom looks amused by the expression on his face, he wishes he could be amused, but he grew up with Maria and Isobel and Max like siblings, though…</p><p>“Is this why you made a point of telling us that Maria and I didn’t share any blood relation? That it was okay if,” he twitches, “she’s like my sister.”</p><p>“Alex seemed very sure of the fact that the two of you just needed him to be not there and you would be married with kids and possibly a dog, at the time I had no reason to not believe him.”</p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p><p>When Michael finally stumbles out of his home office in the early afternoon Max is sitting at the kitchen table with a bowl of cereal pulled close to him and a magazine open in front of him.</p><p>Max is smart, but Michael knows he’s not really reading any of his scientific journals.</p><p>There’s a folder in the middle of the table that Michael ignores while he pours himself some more coffee, pops some bread in the toaster.</p><p>When he’s finished assembling his makeshift snack he sits across from his brother and drinks his coffee and eats his toast.</p><p>“Don’t you have a home of your own?” Michael asks and Max just shrugs at him.</p><p>“Kyle’s on overnights this week, house is too quiet,” Max says, Michael folds his napkin into smaller and smaller squares and doesn’t respond.</p><p>“Kyle and I are fine,” Max finally says, Michael just raises an eyebrow. “We are, you can tell mom that we’re okay.”</p><p>“Sure.”</p><p>Max rolls his eyes at him, then directs his gaze towards the folder in the middle of the table.</p><p>“Sheriff know you’re bringing evidence home with you?” Michael asks and Max rolls his eyes again, even though Michael knows it’s not evidence. It’s a plain manilla folder and Max would never cross that line.</p><p>When Michael flips the folder open there’s a sketch there, it’s a profile sketch that is definitely Rosa’s doing and the guy is the one that was in his mom’s pictures.</p><p>“Jenna’s Alex,” Max says, even though Michael already knows that. “Jenna didn’t say it, Mimi hedged around it in that way she does, but I guess before he managed to erase himself from actual reality, he was your Alex too.”</p><p>Michael stares at the drawing, it’s a really impersonal drawing, Rosa doesn’t know him so she hadn’t managed to imbue it with that spark Rosa manages when she draws one of them.</p><p>“I know this guy,” Michael mutters and he taps his fingers against the edge of the drawing, not the drawing itself, he doesn’t want to smudge it.</p><p>“Michael,” Max says sharply and there’s a napkin pushed under his line of sight and Michael growls low in his throat but pushes the wad against his nose. He doesn’t need to pull it away to know that he’s pushed his brain to a nosebleed. “Tilt your head back,” Max advises and Kyle’s the doctor, not Max, but Max is a healer in their way so Michael listens to him.</p><p>Michael doesn’t know this guy; not enough to put a name to him, though Alex does seem to fit him, his brain is trying to force itself to make connections that it doesn’t have enough information to process through.</p><p>He closes his eyes and breathes, thinks, the guy is familiar, but he thinks he can confidently say it’s not someone he’s come into contact with in Roswell, if he had everyone else would be having this weird feeling of déjà vu as well.</p><p>And if he went to all the trouble to make sure he wasn’t born in the first place he wouldn’t randomly visit or lay down roots in any place where he’d meet any of the people he was trying to erase his presence from.</p><p>If it were him he’d be as far away as possible so as to not give in to temptation and try and form new connections with people who now have no clue who he is.</p><p>Who he was.</p><p>He mentally flips through the places he’s gone and lived, he does it slowly because he already has the nosebleed and he can feel the pressure in his forehead screaming that a migraine is coming.</p><p>There’s not many places he’s gone, he’s only ever been out of state a handful of times and the think tank he works for allows him the freedom to work from home most of the time, only having to make trips out to San Francisco four times a year for project kick off’s and the random ‘thank god it’s finally fucking over’ closing party.</p><p>“IT,” he mumbles and he can feel Max’s hand ghosting over his face, one hand cupping over his to force him to keep the wad of napkin pushed to his nose the other pressing against his forehead to get him to tilt his head back slightly. “He works for IT.”</p><p>“For that think tank of yours?” Max says softly, his hand is gentle against his forehead and Michael is rifling through memories, trying to figure out the first time he saw him.</p><p>He must have been distracted by something or someone, if he’d come across a guy looking like that he <i>would</i> have tried to hit on him, Michael hasn’t hidden the fact he was bi since he was seventeen.</p><p>Michael’s not as good with the mental stuff as Isobel, but the first thing mom did before she let them go off to school with other kids was train them up on their gifts. He can heal if needed, can push into someone’s mind if his back is against the wall but he’s really good with the telekinesis.</p><p>Max is the healer, is like him with the others, but Michael can still sense him tapping on Michael’s mind to gain entrance. Wanting to see what Michael is seeing and he makes a face that he’s sure Max can’t see before he lets his brother in.</p><p>He’s still searching for that first elusive meeting, he <i>knows</i> he would have tried to meet him, guy looks like that he would have likely tossed out his don’t fuck where you work rule and made an exception.</p><p>It’s a jolt when he finds it, when he sees Jenna and Mimi’s Alex right there, sitting behind a computer, headphones on like all the other computer programmers he’s surrounded by and he can feel Max jerk beside him.</p><p>Michael lets out a breath, nudges Max out of his mind and puts his walls back up because Max is going to tell Isobel and mom and the last thing he wants is a midnight mental break in when they find out.</p><p>“What are you going to do?” Max asks, he watches with narrowed eyes as Michael pulls the napkin away, tries not to make a face at the blood there.</p><p>“Nothing,” Michael says. Max just stares at him and Michael stares back.</p><p>He’s not lying, not completely anyway.</p><p>He’s in the middle of a project, doesn’t have any reason to be back in San Francisco for at least a month and if he goes early he’ll get pulled into another project and he thinks Jenna and Mimi and probably his mom are going to be forcing them to spend a lot of that month figuring out how to undo what Alex has done.</p><p>If it’s even possible to undo it at all.</p><p>They might have to deal with the fact that the only Alex Manes they get to have is one that went through a lot of effort to make sure he wasn’t theirs.</p><p> </p>
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</div><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
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</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Lost to Time 4/?</b><br/>
</p><p>
  <i>It’s just about dusk when Jenna goes searching for Alex. She’s half surprised to not find him whispering with Tripp. Instead he’s sitting perched on top of a fence watching the sunset by himself.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“I know you’re up to something,” she says by way of announcing her presence and Alex snorts at her but doesn’t reply. Or tell her she’s wrong.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>She swings her legs over the fence and settles on top of it. It’s not comfortable at all but Alex looks more relaxed then he has in weeks.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Just making plans to keep Shepherd from being a thing in the future,” he says finally, “you think I’m wrong to do that?”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“No,” she says, “but I also don’t think that’s the only thing you’re up to either.”</i>
</p><p> </p>
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</div><p> </p><p>Michael is pretty sure what he’s doing could be called stalking. But he’s still doing it, digging through the think tank’s website looking at all the department rosters searching for one face in a sea of almost five hundred.</p><p>He’s sure it’s not going to be that easy, whatever else he can tell about a man he’s never met but kind of really wants to, is if he doesn’t want to be found he’s not going to be found until he’s ready to be.</p><p>He’s not on any of the IT lists, not even as a temp of any sort.</p><p>He has that random flash of the first time Michael remembers seeing him, thankfully it doesn’t cause another nosebleed; he’s sitting in front of laptop, headphones on, lanyard around his neck and those lanyards signify that he’s an <i>actual</i> employee.</p><p>He’s sure that means he’s up higher than Michael is in the hierarchy, which means his picture will only be there if he <i>wants</i> it there.</p><p>He very obviously doesn’t want it there.</p><p>He’s trying to decide if he wants to reach out to someone, there’s a couple of people on his team that work directly out of the offices in San Francisco, but he doesn’t even know if he’s going by Alex or something else. If he kept the Manes or was convinced to change it.</p><p>“I think this is actually the definition of cyber-stalking,” Max says from behind him, he twists and Max is still in jeans and a t-shirt.</p><p>“You going to rat me out?” he asks and Max rolls his eyes at him. “Not working?”</p><p>“Sheriff thought it would be a good time to take a breather now that we’ve found Jenna and Mimi and aren’t working 24 hours days.”</p><p>Max moves up to stand behind him, leaning over his shoulder and Michael turns his attention back to his screens.</p><p>“I know he works there, I’ve seen him,” Michael says by way of explanation. It’s only the org charts, anything confidential has already been closed down even though there’s only a handful of people he trusts and the lists begins with his siblings and Maria and ends with Mimi and his mom.</p><p>Maybe the Sheriff and Kyle and Michelle, Liz, Rosa and Arturo, probably Jenna should be added onto that list now as well.</p><p>“Can’t find him?”</p><p>“No, not even a face with a different name, or the name with a different face. He’s not in the system at all,” Michael clicks on his mouse in frustration and manages to minimize the entire screen, he growls at the screen but he thinks he actually closed down the website and just buries his face in his hands.</p><p>“Jenna says he was the computer guy, guarantee the first thing he did was hide his presence just in case,” Max says, he squeezes his shoulder gently, and Michael scowls but just because he hates it when Max is right.</p><p> </p>
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</div><p> </p><p>Kyle delivers the bag of stuff that was found in the pod with her when he brings her discharge papers. Her phone should be in there, probably beyond dead at this point.</p><p>“I put it on a charger,” Kyle says like he’s reading her mind, she dumps the bag out on the bed she’s sitting cross legged on.</p><p>Maria had taken Mimi home a few hours earlier so it’s only Jenna in the room at the moment.</p><p>She swipes her finger across the screen and it lights up, battery fully charged.</p><p>“If I tell you to take it easy for a couple days would you listen to me?” Kyle asks idly, she’s not looking at him but she can <i>feel</i> the weight of his eyes on the top of her head.</p><p>“Sheriff won’t let me go back to work for a few days anyway,” she says and Kyle hmms at her.</p><p>She lets out a breath when she sees the number programmed there.</p><p>C A M; she remembers vividly when Alex gave her the number and told her to not attach his name to it.</p><p>She’s never been sure of what he was afraid of, and his ‘phones can be hacked’ was almost added as an afterthought, like he thought he needed to say it.</p><p>Captain Alex Manes and she just stares at it until her vision swims, little white dots fading in and out and she forces herself to breathe evenly.</p><p>Forces herself to thumb her phone back to sleep and drop it on the bed, forces herself to meet Kyle’s worried eyes and smile at him.</p><p>“You don’t have to worry about me, I’ll take it easy,” she says, an easy promise that’s probably not even completely a lie.</p><p>The snort means he <i>knows</i> she’s lying to him but also isn’t going to call her on it.</p><p>“Max is off for a few days as well, I’ll make sure he stops by and checks on you a couple of times.”</p><p>“I’m an adult fucking woman, I don’t need a babysitter,” she mutters and she doesn’t even get to see his eye roll as the door closes behind him.</p><p>She sits there, waits, and when no one else comes through the door she picks up the phone again with fingers that she’s trying to convince herself aren’t shaking.</p><p>Alex isn’t dead, they didn’t go through all this for Alex to be dead.</p><p>They only found the pods that she and Mimi were in. Alex and Tripp had taken Alex’s pod <i>with</i> them which means that they had every intention of Alex going back into it at some point.</p><p>Otherwise they would have just left the abandoned pod behind.</p><p>They took the pod, which means that even if there wasn’t a little Alex Manes born to Jesse Manes, that there is <i>still</i> an Alex Manes out there somewhere.</p><p>She’s clinging to that hope.</p><p>She hits the button to call the number, presses the phone to her ear and listens to the dull sound of ringing at the other end.</p><p>The door pushes open just as the ringing stops.</p><p>“Is everyone okay?” Tripp asks as Nora steps inside the room.</p><p>His voice sounds calm and even, a balm to her soul even as her heart is in her throat because why is <i>Tripp</i> answering Alex’s phone.</p><p>“Jenna he’s fine,” Tripp says and he sounds calm, he <i>sounds</i> exactly the same as he had the last time Jenna remembers talking to him right before they went into the pods.</p><p>“How could you let him do this?” Jenna asks, even though she <i>knows</i> Alex, she’s not his best friend like Kyle proclaimed himself to be, but she’d been stuck with him and Mimi for months while they tried to figure out how to get home.</p><p>Before the stark realization that the equipment that had sent them to the past had been destroyed, or at the very least the capability to return them to their time without them having to actually live through all those years to get there had been destroyed.</p><p>That’s when the idea of the pods had been introduced, when Nora and Alex had figured out how to work around their very much not alien physiology and make them something that could house them.</p><p>“I know you’ve met Alex, so you know that there’s no <i>letting</i> him do anything, he does it and you try not get trampled in the wake of him doing it,” Tripp says and Nora snorts and Tripp goes silent on the other end.</p><p>“Hello Tripp,” she says softly, she sits on the edge of Jenna’s bed, her hand hovers over the phone like she means to snatch it up and away. Instead she folds her hands together in her lap and stares at the wall.</p><p>“Hello Nora,” Tripp responds, his voice still sounds normal but Jenna can hear the faint cracking of it in the middle of Nora’s name.</p><p>They sit there in silence, Jenna waiting for Nora and Tripp, either one of them to say something.</p><p>“Where are you?” she asks and Tripp sighs on the other end.</p><p>“They’re in San Francisco,” Nora says and there’s a slight pause before they can hear Tripp chuckling softly through the phone.</p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p><p>When Tripp presses the button to disconnect the phone he lays it gently on the table.</p><p>The phone has survived a lot, survived being in and out of the pod until Alex had a haven that he felt comfortable enough leaving it locked in the safe instead of physically on his person.</p><p>“We won’t need it, not until Jenna and Mimi wake up,” he’d say, to be honest Tripp had mostly forgotten about the phone and the fact that Jenna had one that most definitely had Alex’s number programmed into it hanging out in her pod with her.</p><p>“You look distressed,” the calm, cultured voice is coming from older man standing in the doorway. He screams military in a way that Tripp doesn’t think he ever did, which is hysterical if only because the man says he was <i>not</i> military in any way shape or form.</p><p>When Alex and Tripp were actively emptying out Caulfield of those that Harlan had managed to lock up there while Tripp was distracted by Nora this man had been the only one that refused to <i>go</i> to Nora and Louise.</p><p>Abraham had never given them a surname, had only been insistent that the ladies didn’t need him and Alex and Tripp did.</p><p>Some years ago when Alex and Tripp had both been secure in their pods he’d managed to get documentation for himself that identifies him as a Manes and as Tripp’s father, Alex’s grandfather.</p><p>Tripp hasn’t asked for specifics though Abraham had left an itemized list of how much he’d spent to make all those things happen and wasted no time in actually <i>acting</i> the part of congenial father and grandfather that’s only wish is that his children would stop making stupid decisions and be happy for once.</p><p>Sometimes Tripp forgets that Abraham <i>isn’t</i> actually related to them by blood.</p><p>“Nora knows we’re in San Francisco,” he says and Abraham chuckles.</p><p>“I’ll take that to mean that young Mr. Michael <i>did</i> notice him when Alex swore up and down that he didn’t.”</p><p>Tripp rolls his eyes but doesn’t disagree with him. Unlike Alex he’s kept tabs on Roswell and the list of people that Alex has indicated were important to him. So much so that he knows that whatever relationship Alex had been sure would spring forth unimpeded by his presence between Michael and Maria has not.</p><p>Had never even been hinted at.</p><p>Maria is in a relationship with a bouncer that works at Mimi’s bar and Michael doesn’t appear to date at all from what Tripp can glean.</p><p>Too intent on his work and his mother and making sure his siblings want for nothing.</p><p>Tripp hasn’t focused on that, he’s sure Alex hasn’t either because Alex had made a lot of decisions based around that relationship that isn’t and has never been; all his decisions, the choices he’s made these last years had been to make sure Michael had a family and love and was happy without <i>their</i> family jeopardizing it.</p><p>And it seems like some of those decisions were now for naught.</p><p> </p>
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</div><br/><a id="cutid1-end" name="cutid1-end"></a>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Lost to Time 5/?</b><br/>
</p><p>
  <i>Alex is bent over the control panel to the third pod they’ve managed to locate. It definitely looks like it’s been through an adventure, burn marks and dents all along one side. She wonders what happened to inhabitant of the pod, if they’re dead or if Harlan Manes had managed to lock themup in his little makeshift prison before they got there.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Do you think you’ll be able to get it to work?” Jenna asks from behind him and doesn’t turn.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>They’ve got nothing but time, but they also have a pretty slim window before time starts to move forward.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“It’s got power,” Alex says and Jenna sits down next to him, “Nora thinks that if we figure how to program it to sync up with the other two that we can use the three separate power supplies to leap frog off each other.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>So if one fails the next battery will kick in, then the next one.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Jenna looks over at the other wall where the pods that Nora and Louise came in are lined up side by side, they look pristine compared to the one Alex is tinkering with.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“I’m just glad we found this one and not one of those gestation pods Nora and Louise were arguing about,” Jenna says and Alex laughs.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Yeah, wasn’t really looking forward to the straw draw on which one of us got to take a bath in liquid silver if it came down to that being our only option.”</i>
</p><p> </p>
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</div><p> </p><p>Nora has a standing meeting with Jim Valenti every Monday at 3:00 pm. Nominally it’s supposed to be to talk through any alien related crisis’ that have reared their ugly head so they’re on the same page.</p><p>There’s been no alien related crisis’ in several months, they’re likely due one shortly, so the last several weeks when not searching for Jenna and Mimi they gossip about their children; Max and Kyle specifically, sometimes Michelle will join them and bring donuts from the little bakery down the street and Nora supplies the coffee because Jim can’t be trusted with it.</p><p>She’s sure Jim is going to go after her for just not telling them where Jenna and Mimi’s pods were located right after they vanished; she’ll deserve it.</p><p>Because honestly, she’s not sure what her response is, when the truth of the matter is that she’d hoped that the longer she waited the more likely that Alex’s pod would just mysteriously appear back in the house with Jenna and Mimi’s.</p><p>It hadn’t, and she knew <i>exactly</i> how long the batteries on the two pods could last before a critical failure.</p><p>Jim doesn’t say anything when she comes into his office, mostly because Jesse Manes is sitting in a chair opposite his desk.</p><p>“Nora,” he says warmly and sometimes it startles her the differences in the man that she remembers only from what she’d seen in Alex’s mind and the one that he ended up becoming because he didn’t end up having a grandfather running an illegal prison holding aliens or a son whose only misstep then was being gay.</p><p>“Jesse,” she nods at him and sets the tray of coffees down on the edge of Jim’s desk, she arches an eyebrow at Jim and he just shrugs his shoulders minutely.</p><p>“I’ll check back later?” Jesse says pushing himself to his feet, he rolls his shoulders a bit then seems to remember that he’s not in uniform.</p><p>“I don’t know if I’ll be able to find anything,” Jim warns and Jesse snorts a laugh.</p><p>“I mean I can’t imagine why it would be a crank, not like there’s an inheritance that there’d be any fighting over unless that dusty trunk of old uniforms in the tool shed is worth a lot of money for some reason.”</p><p>Nora watches him leave, pulls one of the coffees out of the tray and then turns to look at Jim with an arched brow.</p><p>“Cousin of his he didn’t know about called him out of the blue, wanted to catch up, Jesse wants me to check and see if the guy is a crackpot or if he might actually be blood that his old man didn’t tell him about.”</p><p>“Tripp?” Nora asks and she bites her lip as she sinks into the other chair.</p><p>“Sounds like it, would be helpful if you could give me more information than the whole ‘time is a funny thing’. I’m fairly sure that Cameron is going to try and go find this mysterious third person that was with them…”</p><p>“Alex…” Nora says, she looks at Jim and there’s still not a single bit of recognition in his eyes. It breaks her heart a bit.</p><p>“Alex Manes,” she says and Jim blinks at her, “he should have been Jesse and Mindy’s fourth child.”</p><p>Jim looks horrified and Nora can’t tell if it’s at the thought of Jesse and Mindy having more children or what.</p><p>“What did he do?” Jim asks and Nora shakes her head.</p><p>“Nothing that we can do a damn thing to change,” Nora says firmly and Jim opens his mouth, probably to try and disagree with her but she’s been trying to figure this out since Jenna and Mimi went missing.</p><p>The technology is gone, destroyed, there is no way to undo what Alex and Tripp had done.</p><p>All they can do is figure out how to fold Alex and Tripp into the lives they have now created for them at the expense of their own, if they’re even willing to do so.</p><p> </p>
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</div><p> </p><p>They have a little four bedroom that has been in their ‘family’ since 1960 something, at the time it had been someplace safe for Alex and Tripp to sleep away the years and a safe haven for Abraham to watch over them while they did so.</p><p>They hadn’t ever asked him to do that, it was a task that he set for himself once he realized their intentions.</p><p>The fourth bedroom has been Alex’s office for the last year since he officially came out of the pod full time. He has a series of computers and monitors and all sorts of high-tech gadget things that he’s tried to explain to Tripp multiple times.</p><p>It all seems like science fiction story stuff that can’t possibly be real; though he knows it is.</p><p>He’s seen an alien spaceship, spent more years then he was alive in a pod from an alien world and has an <i>actual</i> alien that acts the role of his father.</p><p>“Are you hiding from Abraham?” he asks when he pushes open the door to the office, Alex blinks at him in confusion.</p><p>“No?” he says, though he phrases it as a question so he’s likely wracking his brain trying to figure out if he <i>should</i> be avoiding Abraham.</p><p>“Well dinner was an hour ago and you didn’t come down,” Tripp says mildly, Alex just blinks at him again then glances down at his wrist.</p><p>“I lost track of time,” he admits, he hits a few keys on his keyboard and the lights of his monitors dim.</p><p>“Jenna called,” Tripp says, he sets the phone on the corner of Alex’s desk then settles into the overstuffed armchair that Alex keeps in the corner of the room. Alex stares at the phone for a few minutes, pulling his lower lip between his teeth before he sighs and leans back in chair. Head tilting back so he’s staring at that instead of Tripp or the phone.</p><p>“Her and Mimi are okay?” Alex asks.</p><p>“I didn’t talk to Mimi, but Jenna sounded okay,” Tripp says, he taps his fingers against the arms of the chair. “Nora was there.”</p><p>He leaves it at that, waits for Alex to look at him. And there’s the annoyance that he’s come to expect, Alex is angry that Tripp didn’t go to Nora long before he woke.</p><p>It makes Tripp almost irrationally angry, the Jesse Manes that exists now is a completely different man then the one that raised Alex. But Tripp still would like to know what the man was thinking in treating his son the way he did.</p><p>Alex is smart and determined and loyal, <i>his</i> dad would say that Alex embodies what it means to be a Manes… the fact that his self-worth is so incredibly low is a slap in the face</p><p>He <i>expected</i> that Tripp was going to abandon him to go live his life with Nora and he would wake up alone, but Tripp is a Manes too. He may not be as smart as Alex, but he knows how to be determined and loyal.</p><p>“They know we’re in San Francisco,” Tripp says and Alex stares at him, he doesn’t look in his desk where Tripp knows he has a folded, faded picture of his Michael tucked away in the back of a notebook that he writes what he insists are not song lyrics.</p><p>He also doesn’t ask how, because Alex knows that Tripp knows how they determined that fact.</p><p>“We didn’t even talk to each other,” Alex mutters sulkily and Tripp doesn’t smirk in response.</p><p>“Well he definitely noticed you unless you can think of some other way that Nora knows where we are,” Tripp says, Alex doesn’t respond just tilts his head back to stare at the ceiling.</p><p>“You were the one that approved hiring him,” Alex reminds him, the think tank was a long-ago pipe dream project that he and Alex had been sketching out plans for on the few times Alex came out before the last long sleep of 28 years.</p><p>Abraham was the one that actually pulled it all together, Tripp thinks that it took Alex by surprise when he came out this last time for good and that dream was actually a reality that had a real working organization and people actually wanting to work there.</p><p>He was certainly surprised when he dug into it and found that Michael Truman had not only done his internship there during college and he’d then managed to turn that internship into a full-time job.</p><p>He knows that the different last name, that college degree, the house in his name in Roswell are things that Alex uses to force himself to believe that the decision he made was the right one.</p><p>“That wasn’t me,” Tripp says, “he was hired on his own merits before I even came out of my pod.”</p><p>He’s said it before, he doesn’t think that Alex will ever believe that he wasn’t the one meddling, though he never disputes Michael’s intelligence.</p><p>Eventually it will sink in that if Tripp had been the one meddling he would have just figured out how to break the promise made before that last long sleep and had his pod back into position besides Jenna’s, without risking Alex’s wrath when he woke up and then let the chips fall where they may.</p><p>He didn’t, because he had made a promise, so instead Alex woke up in the house in San Francisco with only Tripp and Abraham there to bear witness to the fact that he still exists, regardless of the fact that he <i>doesn’t</i> actually exist any longer.</p><p> </p>
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</div><p> </p><p>He doesn’t do it very often, its borderline creepy and if someone did what he was doing to him he’d be probably be filled with rage.</p><p>But sometimes when he’s feeling lonely, when he’s feeling so utterly alone… he digs into pictures on Facebook and Instagram, looking at happy smiling faces. Graduation pictures where everyone is beaming ear to ear, vacation pictures with the same.</p><p>He looks at the pictures, because all those happy smiling pictures…</p><p>The pictures of a carefree Michael with arms slung over Max and Isobel’s shoulders and smiles that go all the way to their eyes. Pictures of Michael with Nora hugging him tight and beaming at him, pictures of Max and Kyle with heads bent close together sharing secret smiles, of Maria and some guy he doesn’t know curled up together on a loveseat, of Rosa and Isobel, of Liz and Maria.</p><p>They’re all <i>happy</i>, those smiles are the only proof he needs that the choices he made, they were the right ones in the end.</p><p> </p>
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  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>As an FYI - there is a high likelihood that there will be no update next Monday 11/30/2020. If that is the case, updates will resume on 12/07/2020 as usual.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Lost to Time 6/?</b><br/>
</p><p>
  <i>When Alex starts making the same changes three times because he’s so tired his vision is blurring out in front of him he disconnects the pad that Nora had given him and sighs.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>They’ve got nothing but time, but it still feels like they’re running up against an invisible clock.  He manages to get his feet under him and stand up, shifting uncomfortably until the place where his stump rubs up against the prosthetic settles into a dull ache.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>He needs to spend some time not on his feet, he <i>really</i> needs to hobble around on the crutches that Tripp left in the bedroom they’ve been sharing and leave the prosthetic completely off.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Kyle is so many years in the future and yet Alex can still hear him lecturing him. If this works, if he and Tripp can pulls this off he’ll <b>only</b> have those memories.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Nora is curled up on the couch in the living room a mug of something sweet smelling cradled in her hands staring at the fireplace that looks to have already been banked for the night; he glances out the window and can see it’s already dark out.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Jenna left something on the counter for you to eat,” Nora says and Alex nods but doesn’t head in that direction, instead sitting down in a slouch on the other end of the couch. He tilts his head back and stares at the ceiling.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Will you tell me about him?” she asks softly.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Nora…”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“I know what you and Tripp mean to try and do,” she says, she looks at him and there’s a spark in her eyes that looks exactly like a spark that he’s seen in Michael’s. “If you succeed the version of my son that you knew won’t even exist, what harm could it do.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“You already know his name is Michael,” Alex says. “You could change it to something else, make him somebody else…”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Michael is a good strong name,” Nora says stubbornly. “Not the one he was born with, but a good one to go forward here with.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Alex sighs, stares at the fireplace that if this goes on for many more months, they might need to start using to combat the chill that is already in the air.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>He wants to beg Nora to make sure that if he doesn’t succeed, if the fragments of plans that him and Tripp have don’t actually come to fruition, that she’ll make sure that Michael stays far away from his family.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>He’s hopeful that if <b>he’s</b> not there, that there will be absolutely no reason for Michael to even come within spitting distance of his dad or brothers.</i>
</p><p> </p>
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</div><p> </p><p>He doesn’t know if he sleeps, dreams or long forgotten memories running through his thoughts all night.</p><p>He resolves to not look at the pictures again, not for a good long while if they’re going to throw him this off mentally.</p><p><i>Michael doesn’t have a boyfriend or girlfriend or any significant other</i> his brain so helpfully throws out there.</p><p>He doesn’t understand that, doesn’t understand where they went wrong. Without him there Michael and Maria should have gracefully moved closer and closer together.</p><p>Tripp and Abraham are already sitting at the table in the kitchen when he makes his slow way there, there’s a covered plate on the stove that Abraham retrieves for him while he settles into his chair.</p><p>There is already a cup of coffee sitting in his spot, made the way he likes it which means Tripp made it since Abraham thinks anything other then black is a sacrilege.</p><p>“I booked plane tickets to Roswell,” Tripp says absently, the paper is folded open in front of him so he doesn’t see Alex’s expression.</p><p>“When do you leave?” he asks, he smiles gratefully as Abraham sits the plate in front of him. Tries not to think of how oppressive the silence of the house will be with Tripp and likely Abraham gone.</p><p>“<i>We</i> leave in two days, I’ve checked your calendar, you’ve got nothing coming up that can’t be done virtually via a WebEx or something like it,” Tripp looks at him and there’s something in the lines of his face that screams that he understands Alex’s reluctance to go back but that he’s also going to make him do it regardless.</p><p>“It’s long past time for us to go back to Roswell,” Tripp says softly.</p><p>“You know…” Alex starts and Tripp shakes his head.</p><p>“Caulfield and Shepherd are long buried. Your father doesn’t even have the first clue that they even existed in the first place let alone had their specters shaping whatever man they would become…”</p><p>“My dad didn’t attack Michael because he thought he thought he was an alien, he did it because of me,” Alex says, there’s a small twinge in the back of his mind that screams that he did this, that he convinced his mom to leave his dad right after they had Flint for absolutely no reason.</p><p>That closing Shepherd down, emptying out Caulfield; making sure those two things weren’t a part of any Manes legacy was enough.</p><p>But he couldn’t take that chance, not with Michael. Not with Max or Isobel, or Nora who actually got to raise her son as well as Max and Isobel.</p><p>“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Alex says finally when Tripp doesn’t say anything in response, just arches an eyebrow at him.</p><p>Abraham is silent on the other side of the table, just drinking his coffee and watching them.</p><p>He doesn’t need to say anything, Alex already knows what Abraham thinks, he thinks that both him and Tripp are idiots. But they are, unfortunately for him, idiots that he’s claimed as family so he feels it necessary to follow along behind them cleaning up what he can and sighing loudly at them when he thinks they’re being more stupid and self-sacrificing then the situations actually call for.</p><p> </p>
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</div><p> </p><p>He has a bi-weekly scheduled conference calls with two of his teams on alternating Monday’s. The one he’s lead on is the one that he’s most excited about, alternative vehicles designed to be used in atmospheres not currently found on Earth.</p><p>No one says the words space travel or talks about other planets that they might possibly end up on if they can make things work in real world instead of just in virtual computer models.</p><p>Michael also hasn’t been lowkey trying to figure out the logistics of how he might be able to travel to space or one of those other planets; he’s an alien he kind of thinks he should have first dibs on stepping foot on a planet other than Earth.</p><p>“So I think our timeline is still good,” Troy says on the other end of the phone, it’s not a video call so he’s leaned back in his chair tossing a ball against the wall using his telekinesis. It’s one of the exercises his mom made him do over and over again when he was a kid fresh out of his pod.</p><p>He couldn’t even speak yet, but his mom had him bouncing balls and balancing cups and honing his gifts until he could manage words.</p><p>“Should be, just waiting on Emory and Val to finish up with fuel sources,” Michael says, Troy hmms on the other end of the phone. He’s not muted so Michael can hear the faint hum of conversations on the other end.</p><p>“You work out of the San Francisco office pretty exclusively…” Michael starts and he doesn’t need to be psychic to know that the silence (besides the hum of voices around him) on the other end is Troy confused.</p><p>“Yeah…” Troy drawls slowly, dragging the one word out so it sounds like five syllables and is probably wracking his brain to figure out where Michael is going with this.</p><p>“I’m looking for someone,” and he pauses, holding his hand up like Troy can see him through the phone line, which he knows he can’t but Michael still does it, “saw him last time I was there and I have a first name but I looked on the org charts and couldn’t find him…”</p><p>“He might be a contractor,” Troy says slowly.</p><p>“He was wearing a company lanyard not one of the visitors passes,” Michael says. “His name is Alex, didn’t get a last name and it looked like he worked in IT maybe, or at least with computers… why are you laughing at me?”</p><p>“Only you Truman,” Troy snorts, “he won’t be on any of the org charts, not at any level you have access to anyway;  Alex Manes is like one of the founders grandsons, I don't think he goes by Manes though, think he goes by his mom's maiden name? Maybe, he only comes in and works for IT sometimes because he gets bored I guess, guy certainly doesn’t need to from what I’ve heard.”</p><p>Michael taps his fingers against his desk, ball hanging in the air between his desk and the wall before he lets it fall gently to the floor where it rolls a few inches before coming to a rest next to one of the chair legs on the other side of his desk.</p><p>“So probably not going to be able to meet him at a random project completion…” Michael says.</p><p>“Not likely, I think I’ve only ever seen him myself a handful of times, and when he does work on stuff it’s projects a bit higher up on the tier then we do,” Troy says, he sounds apologetic as they say their goodbyes.</p><p>Michael makes a face as he disconnects, his computer has already gone to sleep and he absently taps the mouse to wake it up.</p><p>He thinks if he made an overture, or an <i>attempt</i> at an overture that Alex would probably be amenable. There’s the little voice in the back of his head that sounds a lot like Max that says <i>would he?</i> in a very sarcastic manner.</p><p>He doesn’t have enough information to make that move, not yet anyway.</p><p> </p>
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</div><p> </p><p>Once she doesn’t have Kyle watching her every move she starts writing. Documenting every little piece of information that she remembers about Alex Manes and their original timeline they came from.</p><p>She’s terrified that she’s going to forget him before he ever reappears in their lives.</p><p>So it’s half a safety net, to write it all down so as to not forget but also an exercise as to what’s different.</p><p>She fills half the notebook, shaking out a cramping hand as she flips back through.</p><p>Her phone startles her when it rings, CAM flashing across the screen and she fumbles for it before she accepts the call.</p><p>“Hello?” she says and hates the bit of desperation she can hear in her voice.</p><p>“Hey Jenna,” Alex’s voice is familiar in that way that she almost sags in her seat, hand covering her eyes as she breathes. For months Alex, Mimi, Nora, Tripp and Louise were the only voices she heard. The only people she saw.</p><p>“You fucking bastard,” she says and Alex laughs like she startled him.</p><p>“It worked though, didn’t it? I mean Michael and Max and Isobel have all had really great lives, opportunities they would never had. They got to grow up with a mom that loved them and never had to wonder where they came from because she probably never hid the truth from them,” Alex says.</p><p>“You could have given them all that and not erased yourself out of creation,” Jenna says. “I knew you and Tripp had some big plan to shut down Shepherd, how did you suddenly not being born become a part of that?”</p><p>Alex is silent on the other end, for long enough that Jenna thinks that maybe he hung up though when she pulls the phone away from her ear she can still see it’s connected.</p><p>“You know my dad didn’t go after Michael because he thought he was alien, right?” he asks slowly. “My dad went after Michael because of me… removing myself from the situation meant that Michael was never in my dad’s crosshairs, because he had no reason to be.”</p><p>“He doesn’t seem to have any problem with Kyle or Max,” Jenna says, because she feels like it needs to be.</p><p>“Neither one of them is his kid,” Alex says. “He doesn’t need to care about them or what they get up to… though…”</p><p>“Didn’t see that one coming?” she grins, because she hadn’t either. She’d fucked around with Max and she’d had a passing flirtation with Kyle before things went to shit, but they neither one of them had seemed all the interested in anything but women in the entire time she knew them… before… in the other timeline she came from.</p><p>“No,” Alex says, he pauses for a second and if she strains she can hear the soft tapping of his fingers on a keyboard. “I couldn’t take the chance, Jenna. I couldn’t… let history repeat itself, not if I could change it.”</p>
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<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Lost to Time 7/?</b><br/>
</p><p>
  <i>Mimi finds him in the morning sitting out on the back porch watching the sun come up, chipped cup of cooling coffee cradled in both hands.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Whatever Louise and Nora have been doing in her mind has her feeling more lucid, more <b>herself</b> then she’s felt in years.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Not since she took the necklace off and hung it around Maria’s neck. A safeguard for a family legacy that neither one of them was ever aware of the true nature of.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“You’re quiet,” she says, she’s got a cup of tea in her own hands and settles on the steps next to him. Watching the sun peek over the horizon at them. It’s going to be a lovely day, she thinks, though probably this moment of the sun coming up will be the only time that Alex will see it.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>He’ll finish his coffee then he’ll go down in the basement with the pods and tinker away until someone drags him away and forces him to eat something. Forces him to sleep in a bed instead of on the ground in front of the pods.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Not much to be said,” he says, which is definitely him not answering a question she hasn’t even posed, that she doesn’t even have the words to ask.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>She knows what he’s planning, though she hasn’t <b>quite</b> figured out how he means to make it happen. She’s certain Tripp will be wrangled into assisting him and she can tell from the way that Jenna and Nora watch them that they’re all quite aware that Alex doesn’t mean to pass time sleeping in a pod.</i>
</p><p>
  <i></i>
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</div><p> </p><p>Nora appears in her doorway after she’s been home for several days, she’s on a forced sick leave which the Sheriff isn’t enforcing but he also hadn’t backed down at her insistence that she was fine.</p><p>She is fine, but it’d been weird to be having this discussion with a Sheriff that had just raised an eyebrow at her and sent her on her way when <i>her</i> Sheriff would have narrowed her eyes, then grudgingly allowed her back to work riding a desk.</p><p>Nora looks only the slightest bit older, and Jenna knows this is because she went into a pod only a few short years after they did.</p><p>“Is it an alien thing?” she asks closing the door behind her, she waves at the loveseat that isn’t covered in papers and settles back in the little armchair, crossing her legs under her.</p><p>“The lack of wrinkles, gray…” she says when Nora just blinks at her in incomprehension.</p><p>“Isobel and I have a salon day every few months,” she says with a shrug, like she’s confused by the human preoccupation with appearances.</p><p>But it hasn’t been that long ago that Nora and Tripp had been worrying about the appearance of Jenna and Alex being seen in public together or having it known they were living in the same little farmhouse. She’s not sure if Alex even knows how close it had been to them being married off to each other in order to keep people from talking.</p><p>“Alex says Tripp is forcing him to come to Roswell,” Jenna says, they thankfully hadn’t had to worry about that. Alex and Nora had figured out the pods and how to get them to work for their situation only days later.</p><p>“Yes, Tripp has forwarded along their flight information, he’s booked them rooms at the hotel in town,” Nora says slowly. “Three rooms when I checked.”</p><p>“Three?” Jenna asks, it should be just Tripp and Alex, why would they need three rooms? She mentally shelves that question as something she can ask Alex when he finally shows up. Right before she beats him upside the head.</p><p>From the expression on Nora’s face it’s something she’s also decided to just ignore for the time being.</p><p>“I should have had Louise take me out of the pod long before the children woke up,” Nora says, “but I didn’t even think of the likelihood that they would do something to keep Alex from ever being born in the first place.”</p><p>Jenna sighs. “How did they even manage to do that,” she wonders, she’s not expecting any answer. Nora is likely as much in the dark about the actual specifics as she is.</p><p>“I know Mindy left Jesse right after Flint was born,” Nora says, “they never divorced and Jesse never said anything other then Mindy had some severe depressive episodes after Flint was born and she went to stay with family and just never came back.”</p><p>“I can’t believe he did this,” Jenna mutters.</p><p>“And there’s no fixing it either,” Nora reminds her, like Jenna needs the reminder. She remembers full well how the tech that was able to send them back was also completely destroyed when they Alex through.</p><p> </p>
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</div><p> </p><p>Flying is something of an ordeal that Alex has never gotten used to. It feels like something that he <i>should</i> be an expert at, the number of times he’s had to use air transportation. But he never has gotten the hang of it.</p><p>Mostly because every single airport handles the fact of his prosthetic differently. This airport doesn’t really care, this airport wants him to take it off and prove he’s physically disabled, this airport wants to swab it down to make sure it’s not a bomb of some sort.</p><p>He’s much more comfortable driving wherever he needs to go. There’s car rentals and he could…</p><p>“Don’t even think about,” Tripp warns as they near the TSA Pre-check booth. Because after all this time Tripp probably knows him better then Alex knows himself.</p><p>Alex just sighs and allows himself to be directed forward.</p><p>This is one of the less invasive trips through an airport, they let him leave his shoes on and allow him to step behind a privacy barrier so he can prove the prosthetic real.</p><p>He can practically <i>see</i> the questions on the young man’s face but he bites his tongue and doesn’t ask them and Alex is still feeling annoyed enough by the fact that he’s being dragged to Roswell <i>against his will</i> that he doesn’t offer.</p><p>“Coffee,” Abraham says and wanders off while Tripp herds Alex towards their gate.</p><p>“I’m not a child,” Alex reminds him, he thinks it highly probably that Tripp will somehow try and secure them together like he’s a child that is going to wander off if not kept hold off.</p><p>“If you think Jenna and Mimi won’t hunt you down if you don’t show your face in Roswell…” Tripp starts and Alex rolls his eyes.</p><p>“I’ve talked to Jenna a couple of times,” he says defensively. He hasn’t talked to Mimi, not quite sure what to say that won’t have her smacking him upside the head.</p><p>He hadn’t realized how much the thought of not being known by the people he loves and cares about would gnaw away at him. That he has those two; that he has Tripp and Abraham and Nora relieves some of that aching pain.</p><p>He rubs a hand across his face and tries not to think about the likelihood of seeing Michael and having the other man look right through him.</p><p>Though he knows that is probably unlikely as Michael has somehow managed to hit every single trigger in the company system searching for him. Based strictly on pictures that he’s seen of Nora’s, Jenna and Mimi’s words and his own fleeting sight of him.</p><p>“I was so careful,” he mutters and Tripp doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to, Alex is really aware of Tripp’s thoughts on the matter.</p><p>Abraham reappears as the gate agents start milling about, a tray with coffees in his hands, a bag with food looped over his wrist.</p><p>“Are we ready to do this,” he says brightly and Tripp snorts as Alex’s lips twist.</p><p>“Not even close.”</p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p><p>Isobel is sorting through his closet, Michael is not actually sure why, there’s not a chance that mom is even going to let them near Alex, Tripp and whoever this mystery third person is before she’s had her chance to talk to them.</p><p>“She’s not even going to let us talk to them,” he reminds his sister and Isobel just looks at him.</p><p>“Like you’re going to let that stop you,” she says.</p><p>Which she’s right, mom telling him to stay away, at least for the first day means that he won’t be in Jenna’s house with his mom, Jenna and Mimi when they arrive… but it <i>doesn’t</i> mean that he won’t be parked two mailboxes down waiting for Max to arrest him for stalking.</p><p>“How bad do you think things were between us?” Michael asks.</p><p>He thinks they had to be pretty bad if Alex determined that figuring how to erase himself from existence was the solution.</p><p>“I thought I was a pretty good boyfriend,” he muses, he’s never got any complaints from the two girls and one guy he dated. And yeah they all only lasted a couple months, but aside from Max none of them have managed to make a relationship last for longer than that. He kind of figured they just weren’t wired for long term commitment and Max was just an outlier.</p><p>“I’m sure he had what he thought were really good reasons for doing what he did,” Isobel says slowly.</p><p>Michael <i>knows</i> that look on his sisters face. She’s itching to be in the same room with one of the three so she can see what they know.</p><p>What’s different, how much better or worse they’re lives might have been in that line that isn’t.</p><p> </p>
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</div><p>
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</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Lost to Time 8/?</b><br/>
<br/>
<i>When the ladies go upstairs to do whatever it is that they’re doing that results in all the shushed giggling Tripp goes searching for Alex.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>He’s out on the edge of the property, leaning up against a fence that needs to be painted and staring off into the distance with a pensive look on this face.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Sounds like Nora and Louise think that they’ll have the pods ready in a few days or so,” he says and Alex nods. He was at dinner, he heard the same thing that Tripp did.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“What are you going to do?” Alex asks, his voice is soft and quiet. There’s a tone there that that Tripp doesn’t like.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“I told you I’d help you,” Tripp says, he folds his arms together. “Still can’t say I think it’s the right decision in the long run.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Shutting down Shepherd or…”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“No,” Tripp shakes his head, “no, shutting down Project Shepherd is the right decision, shouldn’t have even been allowed in the first place… It’s the other thing I have a problem with.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Tripp…”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Look, just hear me out, we shut down the project then your dad, he doesn’t get raised up to hate aliens right? He doesn’t have that family legacy hanging over his head, maybe he makes different choices.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“My dad didn’t attack Michael because he was an alien,” Alex says, Tripp doesn’t look over at him. He and Nora have talked about this, trying to tie the little bits of information that Alex has let slip, that comments that Jenna and Mimi have made into some sort of sense.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>He understands why Alex wouldn’t share this information with him, especially knowing what little bit he knows about how Alex was raised, he probably had no reason to think that Tripp’s reactions wouldn’t mirror his fathers.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“If you do this,” Tripp says slowly, “there isn’t any undoing it. They won’t be your family anymore, they’ll be…”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“They’ll be happy,” Alex says firmly, “they’ll be happy and safe and… they’ll be happy, that’s what matters.”</i>
</p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p><p>It’s a short flight in the grand scheme of things, he’s been on longer, there’s been international flights with multiple connections and long layovers with the prosthetic. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to way he’s always completely drained at the end of any of them.</p><p>“I’m fine,” he mutters, he rolls his shoulders as much as he’s able, there’s a knot in the middle of his back and a heavy weight on his shoulder and neck that he thinks is only partially at the thought of seeing Jenna and Mimi.</p><p>“Maybe I should call Nora and postpone until tomorrow,” Tripp directs to the backseat where Abraham is sitting with his hands folded together in his lap.</p><p>“You could, but she already knows where we’re staying so chances are high that she’ll just appear with Jenna and Mimi in tow at our doors regardless,” Alex says tiredly.</p><p>Tripp just hums at him vaguely though he continues driving and finally parks in front of a small little bungalow that Alex only has the faintest of recollections of.</p><p>Jenna is already standing in the doorway, arms folded across her chest and scowl firmly in place, he can see Mimi just over her shoulder and he can’t see Nora but he’s sure she’s directly behind them.</p><p>“Maybe we should put this off until tomorrow,” he says and he can see Jenna narrowing her eyes like she can hear him.</p><p>Abraham ruffles his hair as he unfastens his seatbelt, door opening behind him.</p><p>“It’ll be okay,” Tripp says as Abraham opens his door, brace already in his hands. He doesn’t use it much anymore, not if he can get away without it. But he’s almost stupidly grateful for the fact that at least one of his hands will be occupied and it drops the probability of physical harm by a large percentage.</p><p>He still steps out of the car and squares his shoulder like he’s going off into battle, hip and leg already stiff with the forced inactivity as he moves forward. Meeting Jenna and Mimi halfway.</p><p>“You…” Jenna waves her hands at him, then punches him in the arm not gripping the brace before hugging him tightly. “Jesus Christ Manes,” she mutters into his shoulder before releasing him to allow Mimi to fold him into a tight hug.</p><p>“Abraham?” he hears Nora’s disbelieving voice before he sees her appear over Mimi’s shoulder.</p><p>He exchanges a confused look with Tripp as Mimi keeps an arm looped around him while still allowing him to turn slightly.</p><p>Abraham just smiles fondly at them all.</p><p>“I can explain.”</p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p><p>Nora doesn’t think that Alex is escaping Mimi or Jenna’s grips any time soon, they’re sitting on the couch flipping through Jenna’s notebook and talking in quiet voices.</p><p>She could strain and hear them, she could dip into Alex’s mind and figure out what <i>exactly</i> is going on because Alex should not exist.</p><p>“I know what you’re thinking,” Tripp says quietly next to her, Abraham is milling around Jenna’s living room. Picking up and putting down random things.</p><p>And Abraham is another whole issue to add into the mix.</p><p>“I don’t even know what I’m thinking,” she says.</p><p>“You’re thinking that the moment that we convinced Mindy to really leave Jesse before she got pregnant with Alex that he should have ceased to exist,” Tripp says matter-of-factly.</p><p>So maybe he does know what she’s thinking, but not the whole of it.</p><p>“Plus you’re wondering how we came to have Abraham with us,” he adds.</p><p>“They tried to send me to you and Louise,” Abraham says, appearing behind Tripp’s shoulder. He’s so much older then he was the last time that Nora saw him. Whatever else he was up to spending large chunks of time in a pod was not factored into that.</p><p>“I spoke to Louise privately,” Abraham continues, “and she asked me if I wouldn’t mind staying with Tripp and Alex, that they needed help more then she needed another person to try to explain.”</p><p>“She never said anything,” Nora says and Abraham smiles gently at her, the same gentle smile he’d managed when he’d told her that her husband was dead and that rescuing the boy and fleeing with Michael and Isobel was all on her and Louise’s shoulders now.</p><p>“They rescued me, us. Freed us before any lasting damage could be done and I sent the rest on to you and Louise but I felt and Louise concurred that they were going to need assistance for their fools errands.”</p><p>Tripp arches an eyebrow at him and Nora tilts her head in the direction of the kitchen.</p><p>Jenna’s backyard is fenced in and semi-private enough she thinks.</p><p>“You call it a fools errand, but it worked,” Tripp says once the door is shut behind them. The door squeaks when it opens, they’ll hear it if one of the other three tries to come out though all three of them are sneaky in their own way.</p><p>“It did,” Abraham agrees, “because it didn’t.”</p><p>Tripp just stares at him, then turns to look at her like she can offer any clarification; she shrugs because she’s done the searches. She had Jim Valenti do the searches as well.</p><p>There was no child named Alex born to Jesse and Mindy.</p><p>“Because he wasn’t born to them, not in any legal sense,” Abraham says and she narrows her eyes at him.</p><p>“Mindy came to me when she was about two months along, Tripp and Alex were already in the pods having completed what they thought was their last needed task. I got her papers and when it was time Anna Marie Manes gave birth to her and her husband Eugene’s only child, she died from complications after having given birth and Eugene’s father took custody of the child since <i>his</i> only son was currently deployed and unable to return immediately. After a brief time for recovery Mindy went on her way,” Abraham recites, like he’s telling a bedtime story, “I send her pictures every few months.”</p><p>“He doesn’t know,” Nora says and Abraham shakes his head.</p><p>“No, much like the other two this timeline was created based on actions they took, they’re the only ones who will remember the other. I’ve not pushed since he came out of the pod, but he’s never had any flashes of memory of anything to do with this line. I’m not sure memories from this line will eventually merge with their existing memories or not.”</p><p>“He’s going to be so mad,” Tripp says, he sits down heavily in one of the patio chairs and covers his face with his hands. “He’s going to be so mad and I’m not going to be the one that explains it to him.”</p><p>“No,” Abraham shakes his head, “I’m sure it’ll fall on my shoulders, but I also knew when Mindy came to me and I made the choices I did that I would need to explain what happened at some point. He had a good childhood,” he says, almost as an afterthought. “I made sure of that, it’s almost a shame that he’s not likely to remember any of it.”</p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p><p>“What do you think they’re talking about out there?” Jenna asks, Mimi has gone into the kitchen, Alex thinks she’s going to try and figure out what the other three are discussing. He hopes that means she’ll report back if she’s able.</p><p>“Alien things that our puny human brains can’t handle?” he says flipping through Jenna’s notebook. She’s wrote everything down from the time she originally arrived in Roswell and all her interactions. All the people she met and the things that happened during that time.</p><p>It’s a smart idea, he should do something like this, document the life he led, the person he was, the people he loved.</p><p>“Are you going to try and see him while you’re here?” Jenna asks quietly.</p><p>Alex sits there for a moment, stares at Jenna’s curved handwriting that inexplicably switches from blue to black ink in the middle of a word so she probably ran out of ink.</p><p>It feels like it’s the only thing he’s thought about since Tripp affirmed that Michael had seen him and Michael had started actively searching for him even though he’s got no real reason to.</p><p>He doesn’t know anything about Alex except as a face in Nora’s photographs and Jenna and Mimi and probably Nora’s insistence that he exists as someone that once loved him enough to give him up.</p><p>Does he try and see Michael? Does he introduce himself without the looming threat of injury at Jesse Manes’ hands?</p><p>See if maybe they can have a future now, without the specter of the past hanging over them.</p><p>“I don’t know if I should see any of them,” he says finally and he doesn’t look over because he doesn’t want to see Jenna’s disappointed look.</p><p>“You can’t hide forever,” she says a blunt edge to her words, “they know about you and Michael, at the very least, is not going to allow you to.”</p><p>Alex sighs and he silently agrees with her, but that doesn’t mean that he has to verbally agree with her as well.</p><p>The last three pages of her notebook are bullet point changes, the ‘Alex not here’, ‘Rosa is alive?’ are both underlined and the ‘Max and Kyle????’</p><p>Which had also been something that took him by surprise.</p><p>“Do we even know when that happened?” he asks wonderingly. Max and Kyle could barely be in the same room together without passive aggressively arguing about Liz.</p><p>“Keeping in mind that I’m having to figure it all out by asking questions that I should apparently already know the answer to, the short answer is they were high school sweethearts or something? They’ve been on again and off again and then on again since they were seventeen,” Jenna bites on her lower lip. “It’s really fucking bizarre because apparently we never had a thing here but I have really vivid memories of him naked and us screwing around.”</p><p>“You’re actively avoiding Max,” Alex says and Jenna nods.</p><p>“I’m actively avoiding <i>both</i> of them, because Kyle and I are friends and if he figures out that I know what Max looks like naked they’re going to have another fight and I’m not going to be the cause of that.” Jenna scowls and looks annoyed.</p><p>“They’re really fucking cute together, it’s really annoying because I’m sure other me thought they were #relationshipgoals or something.”</p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
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</div><p>
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</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Chapter 9</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Lost to Time 9/?</b><br/>
<br/>
<i>They look they’re sleeping, lined up against the wall, eyes closed and features lax. Though Tripp thinks if he looks hard enough, he can <b>still</b> see the lines in Alex’s face.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“Do they dream in there?” he wonders, he kind of hopes not, even with the tiniest bit of information that Alex has offered them on his life before he came to them has been rife with trauma.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“I don’t remember anything from my time in our pods,” Nora says from behind him.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>He straightens, rolling his shoulders and steeling himself for the conversation that Nora wants to have. He’s sure Louise wants to have it as well, but she’s leaving it up to Nora to try and dissuade him from the path that he and Alex have charted for themselves.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“If I asked you to leave it…” she starts and he shakes his head.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“It’s the right thing to do,” he says firmly. “I have to at least try.”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Even if he doesn’t wake Alex to assist, he can’t let his brother continue on as he is. Can’t let Nora end up being imprisoned like a criminal for the simple act of fleeing a dying planet and existing.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“At least leave Alex out of it, let him sleep and wake in a world where he still has a future,” she says, she reaches out to touch his arm, squeezing gently and staring at him. He doesn’t meet her eyes, he’s pretty sure if he goes down this road that means that any chance he might have been able to have with Nora is going to have to be given up.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“I’m going to talk to Harlan,” he says, he knows it’s a futile exercise. But Harlan is his brother, he has to at least make the effort, “maybe I can talk him around, get him to see the other side of this insanity before it’s too late and I won’t ever have to figure out how Alex’s plan is going to work.”</i>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p>
<p>“I kind of thought you’d just go into my head and pull out any plan that Alex and I had and consider it done,” Tripp says. He’s trying not to focus on the fact that the Abraham had apparently raised a little Alex Manes and that there’s somewhere out there a birth certificate for him that lists him as Alex’s father.</p>
<p>How did he even miss that? Abraham woke him up not too long before Alex that last time, had he timed them waking for after the Alex in this timeline got shuttled back to the past?</p>
<p>He’s going to need to ask for the specifics, because at some point they’re going to need to tell Alex. Abraham says he’s going to tell the young man he considers his grandson, but Tripp also knows that Abraham is going to pull the frail old grandfather card and foist it all off on Tripp.</p>
<p>There better be at least one photo album of baby pictures in this for him.</p>
<p>He’d scowl at Abraham and ask but the other man has gone back into the house to get something to drink and likely determine what the other are talking about.</p>
<p>“Don’t think we didn’t talk about it,” Nora says, “but honestly I didn’t think you were even going to be able to move Alex’s pod by yourself, let alone the two of you actually pull of seeing Project Shepherd scuttled.”</p>
<p>“I thought we were going to leave the pod there, the original plan was to just wake Alex up clear out Caulfield, though it wasn’t officially called that yet, destroy everything we could get our hands of for Shepherd and Alex would go back in the pod before you and Louise even knew he was missing,” Tripp says, he drags a hand over his face.</p>
<p>“So what changed?” Nora sits down in the chair next to him, they’re angled close together.</p>
<p>“Alex, when we thought we were successful in splitting up his folks he convinced me that putting the third pod back with Jenna and Mimi’s would only cause confusion,” Tripp sighs heavily. “You don’t know how much I wish that I’d just sent him off to sleep and had Abraham help me move his pod back in position.”</p>
<p>He looks over at the door where he can see the shadow of figures in the kitchen, Abraham and he thinks Mimi are by the door.</p>
<p>“He says he’s going to be the one to tell Alex but I know he’s going to finagle his way out of it and it’ll fall on my shoulders.”</p>
<p>Nora smiles at him, her gentle amused smile that he’s missed seeing.</p>
<p>“How do you know him?” he asks, and he winces at the stiffness in his voice, he doesn’t look over at her because he doesn’t want to see her silently judging him.</p>
<p>“Abraham?” she asks, she tilts her head to the side and looks over her shoulder at where the door to the house remains shut, “he was a friend of my husbands, Michael’s father… he was with us when we fled, in the chaos of the crash I’m not sure when we all became separated. I wasn’t even aware that he still lived until he appeared with you, Louise never told me…”</p>
<p>He looks over at her and she’s biting her lower lip between her teeth, her expression pensive with a small amount of annoyance.</p>
<p>“It makes me wonder what other things Louise decided were not important enough to share with me.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p>
<p>Alex doesn’t want to interrupt them, he spent the several months when they were hiding out in the past originally interrupting every quiet moment the two managed to take.</p>
<p>But he’s tired and he’s getting the wrong side of hungry and even though Jenna has offered to feed him and house him and basically chain him up in her basement until he agrees to whatever she wants from him…</p>
<p>He needs some quiet, he needs the solitude of a hotel room that holds no memories and an hour to sit and breathe.</p>
<p>He also needs to disconnect the prosthetic and take some painkillers with food of some sort.</p>
<p>“I’m going to have Abraham take me to hotel,” he finally pushes the door open and says. Neither of them jump, they both look up like they hadn’t just been talking with heads bent close together smiling gently at each other.</p>
<p>It makes his heart ache a little bit that he kept Tripp from Nora, but once they were done he thought Tripp would go to her, he didn’t think about putting it in writing somewhere that once Shepherd was done, Caulfield was empty and they had successfully managed to keep his parents from having a fourth child…</p>
<p>He probably should have, Tripp is loyal to an extreme that he hadn’t thought possible.</p>
<p>“Hold on,” Tripp says, he pushes himself to his feet, holding out a hand to pull Nora to hers as well. She smiles prettily at him and Alex thinks maybe he <i>didn’t</i> completely ruin things between them.</p>
<p>Maybe they’ll be able to have a future after all.</p>
<p>“You can stay, maybe one of them…” Alex starts and Tripp shakes his head.</p>
<p>“It’s been a long day, I think some food and some sleep and then maybe we plan to meet up again tomorrow and figure out a game plan,” Tripp says, he glances over at Nora and she nods her head in agreement.</p>
<p>“Jesse stopped in to see the Sheriff, asked him to dig into a cousin and uncle he’d never heard of, you should maybe think about familial addresses while you’re here, it might raise an eyebrow if you’re calling the man who’s supposed to be dad, Tripp and Grandpa, Abraham,” Nora says.</p>
<p>“Fit of teenage rebellion that never went away,” Alex waves. “The better question is why are you talking to my... Jesse?”</p>
<p>“I wasn’t, I don’t,” Nora shakes her head. “The Sheriff and I and Michelle sometimes get together to gossip about our sons, other stuff too…. But other stuff has been really quiet, so it’s really mostly centered around the boys right now.”</p>
<p>Alex blinks at her in confusion and she laughs at him.</p>
<p>“Max and Kyle,” she clarifies, “when they came out of the pods I took in all three of them, didn’t make sense to separate them if I didn’t need to.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p>
<p>There’s a brief moment before Michael leaves his house to go potentially stalk an ex-boyfriend that has taken great lengths to make sure he doesn’t know any damn thing about him that he thinks about renting a car.</p>
<p>He doesn’t because he’s already running behind schedule but also because he’s hoping that maybe his mom and Jenna and Mimi will be distracted enough by Alex, Tripp and their mysterious third that they won’t clock his truck parked three houses down around the slight bend.</p>
<p>He watches the car pull up and the older gentleman that he doesn’t know get out of the back. The one climbing out from behind the wheel is unmistakably Tripp, he’s older, but he’s still got the same exact look as the man in his mom’s pictures.</p>
<p>It’s the other man, the one that’s having his door opened by the older man with a brace in his hand and Michael frowns as Alex emerges.</p>
<p>And it is Alex, the one he remembers seeing bent over a computer, heads phone on, completely focused on whatever task he was performing at the time.</p>
<p>He looks tired as he braces an arm against the door to steady himself then takes the brace from the other man.</p>
<p>No one had said he’d been injured in some way, not his mom or Jenna or Mimi. Not a single one of them.</p>
<p>He watches as Jenna hugs him first, then Mimi. Then watches them all disappear into the house.</p>
<p>He should march up to that door and demand answers to questions that he doesn’t even know how to phrase properly.</p>
<p>It’s only 45 minutes later when he hears the car pull up behind him, a glance in the rear view mirror shows Max, not in uniform climbing out. He taps on the passenger window and waits patiently while Michael contemplates just ignoring him.</p>
<p>But Max won’t go away and worse <i>he</i> could probably walk right up to Jenna’s door and be let in.</p>
<p>He unlocks the door and Max climbs in, makes himself comfortable, propping and arm against the window and staring at Jenna’s house.</p>
<p>“I’m not doing anything,” Michael says finally, after they sit there in silence for just shy of ten minutes.</p>
<p>“I know,” Max nods, he doesn’t look over at him. “Just Kyle and I were talking about it and it seemed kind of cruel that we all knew you were going to be out here by yourself just watching. Kyle had a shift or he would have come too, I thought about asking Maria and Isobel to come, but they’d probably be just goading you to go up to the house and talk to him mom’s wishes be damned.”</p>
<p>“Was I that bad a boyfriend?” he wonders and Max looks over at him with a questioning look. “I mean, no one else has ever said they wished they’d never been born so they wouldn’t have me as an ex so…”</p>
<p>“Did you not listen to what mom and Jenna and Mimi were talking about, or did you mentally check out at the ‘you were ex’s’ thing?” Max’s mouth quirks, like he already knows the answer to that question but is still asking it.</p>
<p>“It wasn’t you that was the problem, it kind of sounds like the guy that would have been Alex’s dad was the problem.”</p>
<p>Michael scowls, he knows Jesse Manes, or at least knows <i>of</i> him. Little stories that the Sheriff and Maria’s mom would talk around, he sounds like he was an okay guy. And the few times that Michael himself has had to interact with him when he helps out around Sander’s place because of boredom the other man has been gruff but kind.</p>
<p>“You don’t have to stay here with me,” Michael says when the silence gets to be too thick.</p>
<p>“I got nowhere else to be,” Max grins at him, Michael just huffs a sigh at him and resumes staring at the house.</p>
<p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p>
  <a id="cutid1-end" name="cutid1-end"></a>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Chapter 10</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Lost to Time 10/?</b><br/>
<br/>
<i>The house is quiet when Tripp gets there, he thinks he can pretty confidently state that the moment that Alex, Jenna and Mimi were secured safely in their pods that Nora and Louise moved their attention to more important things.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Most likely keeping the pods holding their still sleeping children safe.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>As well as searching, most likely with little success, for any others that came with them.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Tripp knows that they’ve been unsuccessful for the most part because he knows <b>exactly</b> where the majority of them are.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>It leaves a sour bitter taste in his mouth and he has to take a moment to rest his forehead against the sun warmed wood of the door, has to remind himself to breathe.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>It takes long minutes before he feels like he’s going to be able to open Alex’s pod without bursting into tears before his great-nephew.  He’d hoped (prayed) that waiting would allow him to prove Alex wrong, thought that he could convince Harlan that the path he was meandering down was only going to end in death.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>In sorrow and pain and anger.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Harlan is lost though, he’s firmly convinced that the aliens they’d found are here to destroy them even though not a single one of them raised a hand to defend themselves when captured. He’s managed to convince too many others while Tripp has been distracted by Nora and Alex and attempting to not change so much of their future that none of them will have one in the end.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>The house has only sat still for a few weeks, there’s still a thin layer of dust overtop everything. The dishes from the last meal they all ate together still sitting to the side of the sink.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>When he gets to the pods they all look peaceful, even Alex’s features have smoothed out. He could leave him in there, let things play out how they may and let these three all go back to the future they came from.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Then he thinks about Alex’s face when he told him about Michael, told him what his dad had done and he thinks that while he doesn’t agree with <b>all</b> of what Alex is planning…</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Making sure that Michael, and by extension Max and Isobel grow up in a house with family that knows and understands who and what they are is such a little thing to ask.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>And he’s got some time to change Alex’s mind on the other thing, to convince him that just not being born isn’t going to do anyone any favors.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Least of all Alex.</i>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p>
<p>Michael’s already got the truck started up when the rental car holding Alex, Tripp and the other guy pulls away. He’s all set to follow them at a discreet distance with Max along for the ride whether he wants to be or not when Max’s phone rings.</p>
<p>“Hey mom,” Max says and Michael huffs a sigh and puts the truck back in park. There’s only a handful of good hotels in town, he knows the plate number of the rental car, he’ll be able to find it pretty quick.</p>
<p>“I don’t think Michael’s eaten anything yet,” Max says and Michael scowls at him, he had breakfast and he brought a couple of granola bars with him.</p>
<p>“Mom wants us to come inside,” Max says when he hangs up the phone.</p>
<p>Michael looks forward, at where the car is no longer parked or even visible. He could boot Max from the car and have him go have an awkward lunch with mom and Mimi and Jenna.</p>
<p>“You know Jenna and Mimi know him, right?” Max says softly. “The him that none of us have any recollection of ever meeting, so if you’re really intent on knowing him, maybe you should…”</p>
<p>“I shouldn’t care,” Michael says, “I mean I don’t know him from anyone and it feels like this is nothing but wasted effort but…” he gnaws on his lower lip. Worrying it between his teeth while he stares off in the distance at a car he can’t see holding a man he doesn’t remember. “I feel like I do, you know… like I <i>should</i>.”</p>
<p>When he looks over at Max there’s nothing but understanding there.</p>
<p>He sighs heavily and moves the truck forward, putting it in park in the spot the other car had pulled away from.</p>
<p>When he climbs out, pocketing the keys he can already see their mom standing at the door. Hands on her hips, a look of annoyance on her face.</p>
<p>“What did I say?” she asks as they walk up, Max leans forward so she can ruffle his hair and kiss his cheek, when he moves inside Michael gets the same treatment.</p>
<p>“We just sat in the truck,” Michael says defensively. They probably didn’t even noticed them.</p>
<p>“Alex is prior military, so is Tripp,” Nora tilts her head to the side wrapping her hand around Michael’s arm and drawing him inside so she can shut the door. “So is Abraham for that matter.”</p>
<p>Michael’s not quite sure what to say to that so he doesn’t say anything, he should point out that Alex is <i>probably</i> not prior military anymore being that he managed to change things enough that he doesn’t exist anymore.</p>
<p>Jenna and Mimi are putting together sandwiches, Mimi slapping at Max’s hands every time he tries to take one.</p>
<p>“We’ll put them at the table when we’re finished,” she says.</p>
<p>“Michael wouldn’t even share his granola bars with me,” he says pitifully.</p>
<p>“Should have brought your own,” Michael says, pulling a chair to sprawl in. His mom taps on his shoulder as she passes by and he rolls his eyes but straightens up in the chair. He ignores the approving look she shoots him as she gathers a picture from the refrigerator.</p>
<p>They eat in silence once everything is on the table.</p>
<p>“So what’s the verdict?” Michael asks when they’re finished and he’s got a glass of lemonade sweating in his hands.</p>
<p>“He’s not completely opposed to meeting with you or anyone for that matter,” Jenna says.</p>
<p>“Because he’s convinced himself it won’t matter, that it’ll be just a shake hands and hi and everyone will go on their merry way. Proof that he did the exact right thing, even though we all know that it was not,” Mimi says, she looks over at Michael. Her eyes piercing through him just like Maria and Isobel’s do, though Mimi tries to be nice about it at least and only skims over the surface of his mind.</p>
<p>“Tripp’s going to talk to him,” his mom says quietly. “I agree with Mimi though, he thinks he did the right thing and he’ll use any meeting we <i>force</i> upon him to cement in his mind that he was right.”</p>
<p>“So what do we do then?” Max asks, he thankfully doesn’t look over at where Michael is frozen in his seat thinking that Alex will leave.</p>
<p>That Alex will leave and he won’t ever get any opportunity to prove that the <i>other</i> Michael, the one who was foolish enough to give up Alex for Maria is not <i>him</i>.</p>
<p>It’s completely insane and he’s never put any credence in that love at first sight bullshit that the girls all sigh and dream about; that Max and Kyle are actual proof of…</p>
<p>It shouldn’t matter, he’s never met the man, only seen him in the flesh twice now, but he <i>knows</i> deep in his bones that Alex could be for him what Kyle is for Max.</p>
<p>That other half.</p>
<p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p>
<p>Abraham made sure they all had separate rooms though they all are on the same floor, right near each other. Alex thinks he does things like this because he’s firmly of the belief that he lets Alex and Tripp get too far away that they’ll get up to something he can’t get them out of.</p>
<p>He’s not sure how long they’ll be here, he’s hoping just long enough to do whatever needs to be done. But he also knows Tripp and Abraham have something else up their sleeve.</p>
<p>As such he unpacks his bag into the small dresser and sits on the corner of the bed contemplating whether he has enough energy to go out for food or if he’s going to be ordering something quick and probably awful from the room service menu.</p>
<p>The low soft tapping on his door distracts him before he’s come to a decision.</p>
<p>He really wants a burger and fries from the Crashdown, but he doesn’t think he has it in him emotionally to walk in there and not have Arturo and Liz and Rosa know him.</p>
<p>His hip is already aching when he takes the couple of steps over to the door, opening it to reveal Tripp standing there with a bag of take-out from The Crashdown in one hand and a cup holder with shakes in the other.</p>
<p>“How did you even have time?” he asks as he steps back to let him in. Tripp raises an eyebrow at him.</p>
<p>“It’s been almost two hours,” he says as he sets everything down on the small table. There’s two chairs pulled up to it, one of them has Alex’s laptop bag in it which Tripp moves before he sits down.</p>
<p>Alex blinks at him and looks down at his watch, almost shocked to see that Tripp is correct.</p>
<p>How the hell did he lose two hours unpacking a bag, puttering around a small room and trying not to think about how fucking close Michael is.</p>
<p>“Sit and eat before it gets cold son,” Tripp says and he grins at him as he opens his own container of food.</p>
<p>Alex can smell the burger and the fries and his stomach growls angrily at him. He hadn’t even realized he was hungry until Tripp showed up with the bag.</p>
<p>“Son?” he asks, as he opens up his own container, he closes his eyes as he breathes in the smell of Arturo’s burgers and fries. Ignores the prickling of tears and swallows past the lump in his throat.</p>
<p>“Well that’s the cover story right?” Tripp says, “You’re my kid, Abraham’s my old man, somehow, some way we’re tied into the Manes family tree that doesn’t have anything to do with me being me. Probably should look over the documents Abraham has before I meet up with Jesse, make sure I know exactly what’s on them?”</p>
<p>“I’m still not sure why you want to meet with him,” Alex mutters at his burger.</p>
<p>“He’s family, and honestly I want to make sure that whatever else has been going on that Harlan didn’t leave us any landmines to try and diffuse.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p>
<p>Jenna wishes she could be surprised when Michael leaves, then Nora and Mimi leave and Max is left behind.</p>
<p>She’d remind him that she doesn’t need a babysitter or a minder, remind him of all the times she’s kicked his ass and had his back.</p>
<p>But she’s half terrified to find out that none of that stuff happened here.</p>
<p>“I know you can take care of yourself,” Max says and she arches an eyebrow at him and he just shrugs at her. Making himself comfortable in the overstuffed armchair while she curls up on one side of the couch.</p>
<p>“How did you and Kyle become, you know…” she says. It’s one of the other biggest differences here other then Alex managing to not exist.</p>
<p>“He was…” Max rubs at the back of his neck. “When we came out of the pods it was just the three of us and mom, but a little bit after that mom brought the Sheriff by. I’m not even sure how they knew each other at the time, but she brought him by and he brought Kyle, he was…”</p>
<p>“Oh my god,” Jenna mutters, then sighs.</p>
<p>“He was a quiet kid, being the Sheriff’s kid meant a lot of the others either picked on him or were afraid he was like a spy or something.”</p>
<p>“You guys were like eight, right? I mean what kind of nonsense could eight year olds be getting up to?”</p>
<p>“You’d be surprised,” Max shrugs.</p>
<p>“So you never dated Liz?” she asks, Max looks at her, tilts his head to one side like he’s trying to figure out what she’s pushing for.</p>
<p>“Were we a thing?” Max asks in return and Jenna blinks at him, unsure whether she should answer or not.</p>
<p>“It was like always Liz for you,” she says finally, “I mean even when you were sleeping with me, I’m pretty sure I was just a means for you to get your rocks off.”</p>
<p>“Liz?” he asks, just blinking at her, like the name doesn’t compute even though she’s pretty positive they’re at least <i>friends</i> here, if nothing else.</p>
<p>“I don’t even think you and Kyle were even friends where I came from; maybe friendly when needed, but definitely not high school sweethearts, and definitely not the probably getting married by the end of the year couple.”</p>
<p>“We haven’t told his parents or mom or Michael, Isobel or Maria yet,” Max says and Jenna gapes at him. “I asked him right before you went missing, and then, well…”</p>
<p>“I went missing,” Jenna finishes for him.</p>
<p>“We’re waiting for things to calm down before we tell everyone, but nothing seems to be calming down,” Max mutters and Jenna laughs at him.</p>
<p>“You should just tell everyone, it’ll at least be a good excuse to have a party, and if we plan it right we might be able to con Alex into attending before he attempts to escape town without talking to any of the people he really should talk to.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p>
  <a id="cutid1-end" name="cutid1-end"></a>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Chapter 11</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Lost to Time 11/?</b><br/>
<br/>
<i>Tripp kind of wants to call Nora or Louise, ask them how long they should expect the lethargic tiredness that Alex can’t seem to shake to last.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>He doesn’t, but only because he doesn’t want one or both of them to be actively searching for them right now. Especially since Alex is in no shape to fight them if they want to strong arm him back into his pod and force Tripp to put the pod back with Jenna and Mimi’s.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>When he checks on him, Alex is still passed out face down in the bed, he doesn’t look as if he’s moved at all since he went down hours ago.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>It’s been four days since Alex came out of the pod, the first day he’d been fine, but that had likely been the adrenaline of knowing they had to move fast to get the pod loaded and moved.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Tripp had been all for leaving it where it was, but Alex had been adamant that the pod needed to come with them. Which only served to highlight that Alex’s goals hadn’t changed one whit.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>He lets out a long a shuddering breath and pulls the door the bedroom closed; Harlan has taken to dropping by at random times.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Tripp has his ear to the ground almost all the time when on base and the grapevine has him seeing someone that Harlan is apparently trying to catch him with. Likely that mystery lady will become the reason why Tripp is asking questions about the Project and its purpose and whether what’s being done is actually the right thing.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Another reason why he won’t call Nora or Louise, he certainly doesn’t want either one of them in Harlan’s crosshairs now when he can see that Tripp’s blind familial loyalty is wavering.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Alex never said the words, but the fact that Nora and Louise’s kids didn’t grow up with family speaks volumes, he’s certain that the future Alex is trying to change would see one or both of them locked up in that prison that Harlan won’t admit exists.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>If they change only that one thing, Tripp will gladly go to his death a happy man. </i>
</p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p><p>Abraham comes to his room with a coffee and breakfast from a bakery that Alex doesn’t remember existing and his backpack looped over one shoulder.</p><p>That backpack has been around for ages, Alex has vague memories of Tripp buying it for Abraham right after they got everyone out of what would eventually have become Caulfield.</p><p>It didn’t have any name of record when Alex and Tripp shut it down, it was barely even operational then.</p><p>“I think Tripp is meeting with Jesse this morning,” Abraham says when Alex answers the door.</p><p>“Better him then me,” Alex mutters as Abraham hands him a coffee and a paper bag.</p><p>If Alex doesn’t have to deal with Jesse Manes all the better, he’d like to not even have to see him before they leave town and there’s really very little reason for him to have to seek him out.</p><p>They sit at the little table in the corner where Alex and Tripp had eaten dinner, Abraham puts the backpack down on the floor by his feet.</p><p>They eat in comfortable silence, Alex with his phone in hand scrolling through e-mails and marking ones he needs to follow up on; Abraham has one of the magazines he bought in the airport open in front of him.</p><p>“So…” Abraham starts when they’re finished eating and just drinking their coffees, Alex looks up at him and Abraham has an expression on his face that Alex is not familiar with but kind of reminds him of Tripp’s facial expressions when he’s getting ready to tell Alex something he doesn’t want to hear.</p><p>Alex lays his phone screen down on the table and sets his coffee down as well, he folds his fingers together and waits.</p><p>“Tripp said I needed to tell you, the sooner the better so we’re all on the same page and…” Abraham pulls his backpack into his lap, “I probably should have told you months ago but…”</p><p>“Abraham…” Alex starts as the other man unzips the backpack and pulls out worn looking book that kind of reminds him of the scrapbooks that his mom used to futz around with.</p><p>Abraham holds it in his hands and bites his lip.</p><p>“I told you I would help in whatever way I could,” he says and Alex nods, “and when you and Tripp went back in the pods we thought we had been successful…”</p><p>Alex swallows thickly as Abraham heaves a deep sigh and holds the book out to him with both hands. Alex doesn’t want to take it, not when he <i>knows</i> deep in his bones that whatever it contains means they failed at least one of their assigned tasks.</p><p>“Alex,” Abraham says, “you didn’t grow up with him, and as far as any legal documents are concerned you were not born to Jesse and Mindy Manes.”</p><p>Alex takes the book, sets it in the center of the table, equal distance from both of them. When he flips it open the first picture is of a woman with her hands pressed to her swollen stomach, her face is cut off so it can’t be seen and when he flips to the next one he can see a copy of a birth certificate.</p><p>“Alexander Whitman,” Alex murmurs.</p><p>“We agreed, Alex Manes would no longer exist,” Abraham says. “Whitman was an old family name of mine, I thought it fitting since you gave me yours that I give you one of mine in return.”</p><p>There’s a baby picture on the other side, that’s him blinking dark eyes at the camera and as he flips through the book there’s more of him. A variety of ages, smiling and laughing and being a kid that he doesn’t really ever remember being.</p><p>“She promised you and then when she found out she was pregnant she came to me,” Abraham says. “This was the solution that we came up with that kept you away from Jesse, protected Mindy and still meant that at the end you would still exist, in some form or another.”</p><p>“Did Tripp know?” Alex asks and he hates that he feels more betrayed by the thought of Tripp knowing and saying nothing, then the fact that it was done in the first place. The relief is overwhelming when Abraham shakes his head.</p><p>“Not until yesterday, he was unhappy with me, made sure before he left this morning that I knew that my first order of business was to make sure <i>you</i> knew.”</p><p>“I won’t remember this, will I?” Alex closes the book after his high school graduation pictures where he sees himself smiling widely and Abraham with his over his shoulders looking every bit the proud grandfather.</p><p>“I don’t know,” Abraham says honestly, “I think it unlikely but in my experience nothing like this has ever happened so I think we’re all flying a little blind to some extent.”</p><p>“How did you even hide him?” he asks, Tripp had been out of the pods longer then Alex has.</p><p>“He, you knew about the pods, I never hid them from him, he used to go sit with you both and read books to you,” Abraham shrugs, “plus in this timeline you went missing <i>before</i> Mimi and Jenna by several months. There were only about 36 days where I had to worry about Tripp stumbling over you… him.”</p><p>Abraham looks at him, every year of his age evident in the lines of his face.</p><p>“I gave you the absolute best childhood that I possibly could,” he says and Alex manages a smile at him. Because he can still see the pictures even with the book closed.</p><p>Abraham had been a grandfather, had taken that role and the Alex that he raised was a happy, smiling, laughing boy in those photos. Alex wishes he could remember <i>that</i> childhood instead of the one he does.</p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p><p>Tripp doesn’t know quite what to make of Jesse.</p><p>He remembers the things that Alex told him; the way he grew up, the childhood he had. The father who could never accept that his son was gay.</p><p>They meet for coffee, Abraham just raising an eyebrow as he collects coffees and breakfast to take back to Alex and leaves Tripp to his conversation with Jesse.</p><p>Alex remembered Jesse speaking with nothing but fondness when it came to <i>his</i> great uncle Tripp. He doesn’t have those memories, the man sitting across from him is a virtual stranger.</p><p>“My dad didn’t even know your father existed,” Jesse is saying and he sounds so earnest, almost kind.</p><p>Tripp <i>wants</i> to like him.</p><p>“I haven’t talked to my dad about it in real detail, he always just says that grandpa and his brothers had a difference of opinions and they all went their own ways. As far as I know he didn't ever really talk about it, not to an extent that my dad knew anything about it,” Tripp shrugs.</p><p>“Yeah,” Jesse’s mouth twists, “my granddad had some real odd ideas about things, but he did try to find his brother Eugene right up until he died. Made us promise we’d try and find him if we were able.”</p><p>“I’d have to talk to talk to my dad but I’m pretty sure he died. I’m pretty sure he never married or had kids, it’s why my dad named me after him,” Tripp says. Jesse nods along, the expression on his face saying he expected nothing less.</p><p>There’s something in his eyes though… Alex will likely have not left his room hoping that if he just stays in one place behind locked doors that he won’t come into contact with anyone that he doesn’t expressly want to come into contact with.</p><p>He’ll still be sweeping all three of their rooms for bugs of some sort.</p><p>It’s not that he doesn’t trust Jesse, he’s supposed to be family after all, but he doesn’t trust Jesse.</p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p><p>Michael knows if he gets caught his mom is going to string him up in the backyard by his toenails. And he knows it’s irrational, he’s got Isobel and Maria’s voices in his head telling him that he’s acting like a crazy person.</p><p>But Alex is supposed to be <i>his</i> person, like Kyle is Max’s and Rosa <i>was</i> Isobel’s until Isobel decided they couldn’t all be gay and broke up with her… and if he’s supposed to be his then he kind of wants to meet him in person, shake his hand, look in him in the eye. So he can definitively say ‘yes, this is my person’ or there might be a good chance that they’ll meet and there will be absolutely no spark to speak of.</p><p>Which Michael is highly sure is not actually likely but he’s going to have to make sure all his options are open.</p><p>So he went mindwalking which his mom is going to yell at him for, but he also knows Jenna is meeting Alex for lunch at the Crashdown, which Michael needed to eat anyway so…</p><p>He sits up at the counter and Rosa doesn’t even take his order just rolls her eyes at him like she knows what he’s up to. Which when Isobel slides into the seat next to him is quite likely.</p><p>“Mom said…” Isobel starts as the bell over the door rings and Michael twists his head to see Jenna come in. Right behind her is the guy that he remembers, he doesn’t have the arm brace today but he’s still walking too stiffly and he vaguely remembers his mom or possibly Jenna or Mimi mentioning an incident that resulted in him losing his leg.</p><p>Michael’s not sure what his face is doing but Jenna just looks exasperated and Alex beside her looks resigned.</p><p>“Alex…” Jenna says and Alex shakes his head, cutting her off.</p><p>“It’s fine,” he says even as he bites at his lip and looks anywhere but at Michael.</p><p>He still wants to know what he did, beside the whole Maria thing which he still can’t wrap his mind around, to make this Alex want to make sure he wasn’t in his life. His mom says it was all about protecting him, them; but Michael doesn’t think that’s necessarily the whole truth.</p><p>He swings off the stool, wiping palms he hadn’t even realized were sweating on his jeans before he steps closer to them. Isobel is right beside him, probably so she can report everything verbatim to mom and Max and Maria later.</p><p>“Michael Truman,” he says and he holds out a hand that he’s gratified is not shaking in his nervousness.</p><p>Alex looks at his hand, eyes dark and searching when he finally meets Michael’s.</p><p>“Alex,” he says finally, taking Michael’s hand, fingers squeezing tight around his. His skin is warm against his and there’s something… he doesn’t even think he can put into words the way it feels like some little part of him that he didn’t ever know wasn’t settled…. it settles.</p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p>
  <a id="cutid1-end" name="cutid1-end"></a>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Chapter 12</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Lost to Time 12/?</b><br/>
<br/>
<i>”Can you go check on the pods?” Louise asks her several weeks after Tripp has dropped off the grid and they haven’t even had a sighting of him.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Why?” Nora asks, she’s suspicious by nature. Louise asking her to check out the ceremonial chambers is how they found the boy in the first place.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Max, she reminds herself, both Alex and Jenna know the man that boy will become and he’ll be called Max.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“I don’t know,” Louise says, there’s lines on her face and she looks more troubled then Nora can ever recall her looking. “Something feels… off, different… I can’t put my finger quite on it. But can you check and make sure the pods are okay and functioning correctly?”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Alright,” she says easily, it’s not a hardship to go check on the pods. She’s sure all three with still be sleeping their time away peacefully.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>There’s dust on the doorstep and the door is locked, she and Louise share a key; Tripp has the other. There’s no sign of footsteps or that anything has been disturbed.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>She hasn’t had the heart to come back to the house where she was able to spend time so freely with Tripp, where they spent so much time trying to figure out how to get Alex, Jenna and Mimi back where they came from.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>She’s still not quite sure how they managed to travel back in time in the first place. None of their technology has or had that capability. She thinks it will be forever be one of those things that they never understand the mechanics of.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>The house smells musty and old, it feels like it’s been abandoned for <b>years</b> instead of the just over a month she knows it to be.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>The power still works and she flips the switch for the lights, momentarily gratified when they come on until the light reveals the truth of the room. She presses her hand to her mouth and her stomach drops.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>The pods containing Jenna and Mimi still stand side by side, but the spot on the other side of Jenna where Alex’s pod should be is empty.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>No pod. No Alex.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Tripp what did you do?” Though the better question is likely what did Alex convince Tripp to do?</i>
</p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p><p>Tripp still feels off center after meeting Jesse. He can’t put his name on, can’t <i>quite</i> figure out what is wrong.</p><p>Maybe after he sits down and talks through the meeting with Alex and Abraham he’ll be able to determine why that is.</p><p>Alex is gone when he gets back to their hotel, he first taps on his door and when he doesn’t answer he goes to Abraham’s room right on the other side of Alex’s.</p><p>“Ms. Cameron came and dragged him off to lunch,” Abraham says when he opens the door and sees Tripp standing there.</p><p>“I’m surprised he agreed with that.”</p><p>“I don’t think she gave him much choice in the matter,” Abraham says with a sardonic grin, he steps back to let him enter. “How did your meeting go with…” his mouth twists.</p><p>As much as he calls Alex and Tripp family, Tripp doesn’t think he’s okay with claiming Jesse and the rest of his sons as family. Alex and Tripp got that honor strictly by the amount of time they’ve spent with Abraham over the years.</p><p>Both in and out of pods.</p><p>“It was okay,” Tripp shrugs, he glances around the room.</p><p>“We’re secure in here, I’ll sweep Alex and your rooms once we’re all fully back for the night.”</p><p>“We should have just gotten a suite,” Tripp mutters, “or rented a house.”</p><p>“Alex won’t be pleased but I did make a few calls and we’ll be viewing some houses while we’re here,” Abraham says settling himself in one of the chairs at his table.</p><p>Tripp arches an eyebrow at him.</p><p>“It will get very expensive, very quickly to continue staying in hotels. And since I saw the way that you and Nora were looking at each other, and having seen the way that Ms. Cameron is attempting to drag Alex back into their circle of friends I think having at the very least a stationary secure place to stay while in Roswell will be the most cost effective going forward.”</p><p>“You’ve been planning this for a while,” Tripp says and Abraham just smiles at him, all teeth and pride in himself.</p><p>“So tell me how your meeting went, you look,” Abraham cocks his head to one side and studies him, “you look unsettled.”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Tripp says, dragging a hand over his face and sitting in the chair opposite Abraham, “I just… there was something off, I couldn’t put my finger on it.”</p><p>“He didn’t say anything that led you to believe he might be a threat to us…”</p><p>“I don’t… I don’t trust him, not at all and I’m honestly not going to be in a rush to put you or Alex in the same room with him unless there is absolutely no getting past it.”</p><p>“I told him,” Abraham says and Tripp looks at him in surprise. He really had thought that Abraham was going to leave that task on his shoulders even though Tripp was in a pod and had absolutely <i>nothing</i> to do with the decisions that Abraham ultimately made on their behalf.</p><p>“And?”</p><p>“He wasn’t as upset as I feared he’d be,” Abraham says, “but I also know Alex, both versions of them and he’ll take some time to process what I told him and the book and documents that I gave him and then he’ll come back with his questions that I may or may not have answers for.”</p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p><p>“Okay, so we we’re going to eat lunch,” Jenna says finally when the silence gets to that awkward place where someone has to say something to break it or they’ll still be standing there when the dinner crowd starts coming in..</p><p>And since Michael and Alex are literal statutes at the moment, hands locked together in a handshake that has gone on <i>way</i> longer than it should have and Isobel is just looking on in amused silence she guesses that means it’s up to her.</p><p>Alex startles slightly, just enough that he seems to remember that he’s in a public place.</p><p>“We’ll eat with you,” Isobel says brightly, wrapping a hand around Michael’s arm and tugging him in the direction of an empty booth.</p><p>Alex follows since Michael hasn’t seen fit to actually end the handshake that is verging into <i>handholding</i> territory with every second that passes.</p><p>Jenna just shakes her head, because how is this seriously her life at this point.</p><p>Michael had to let go of Alex’s hand when Isobel pushes him into a booth, and he looks annoyed by the fact that he has to do so while Isobel seems to be utterly unrepentant as she slides in after him.</p><p>Jenna lets Alex slide in the booth on the other side before sitting next to him. He’s got his hands folded together in his lap, hidden from view by the table but Jenna can feel the minute tremors as he’s probably going through waking nightmares of his dad catching them sitting in the same vicinity about to possibly talk to each other.</p><p>Jenna doesn’t know how to remind him that his dad is <i>not</i> actually an issue for him anymore so instead she leans into his side slightly, nudging him with her elbow to let him know that she’s still there.</p><p>All she’d wanted was lunch, and she’d mostly checked everyone’s schedules to make sure that everyone would be tied up somewhere else because this particular group of friends seems to have a group calendar that she’s somehow on.</p><p>Michael’s schedule said he was supposed to be on a conference call, Isobel was free but Jenna wasn’t actually worried about Alex running into Isobel.</p><p>“So I’m Isobel,” Isobel smiles brightly at Alex who just blinks at her like he can’t comprehend the words she’s saying, “this is my brother Michael.”</p><p>“I’m aware,” Alex says slowly.</p><p>“And you’re Alex Manes,” Isobel says with a smile half curving her lips.</p><p>“Whitman,” Alex says and Jenna joins Isobel and Michael staring at him.</p><p>“Whitman?” Jenna says at the same time that Michael starts, “that’s why I couldn’t…” and snaps his mouth shut.</p><p>Isobel huffs a sharp laugh and Michael turns his head to slightly to glare at her.</p><p>“Why you couldn’t…?” Alex prompts and Michael shakes his head though two little spots of red dot his cheeks as Jenna stares at him. She doesn’t think she’s <i>ever</i> seen Michael <i>embarrassed</i>.</p><p>“Why he couldn’t find anything on you,” Isobel offers, “he’s been doing his best impression of a cyber stalker… though, can it be considered cyber stalking if he didn’t actually <i>find</i> anything?” she muses.</p><p>“You were trying to find me?” Alex asks, arching an eyebrow and Michael just looks at him. They stare at each other in silence for long enough that Jenna is wondering if they would even notice if she and Isobel left.</p><p>“So Maria, Liz and I are throwing Kyle and Max a ‘we’re tired of waiting for you to announce your engagement so we’re just throwing you an engagement party so we can move on with planning the actual wedding ceremony’ party,” Isobel says, “you’re coming.”</p><p>“I am, am I?” Alex asks, no one ever came over to take their order so Jenna is kind of surprised when Rosa shows up with a tray filled with plates.</p><p>“Yes,” Isobel says decisively, before she turns to smile at Rosa who flushes before rolling her eyes and walking away.</p><p>“Something you want to share with the group?” Michael asks tapping his fingers against the side of his plate as he looks at her.</p><p>“We’re just talking,” Isobel says the tone of her voice is dismissive but Jenna doesn’t think any of them miss the way she won’t look any of them in the eye.</p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p><p> </p><p>The entirety of their family, save Michael and Isobel who are on their way are in their living room.</p><p>“Why didn’t we just elope?” he asks and Kyle wraps his arms around him from behind and presses his cheek to his shoulder.</p><p>“Because your mom would have straight up murdered you, my mom would have killed me and it would have been a toss-up whether it was Isobel or Maria would be the ones to melt our brains.”</p><p>Max sighs and twists in Kyle’s arms, hugging him tightly. When Kyle tugs gently on his hair he loosens his arms and when Kyle smiles gently at him he kisses him. He can still feel the curve of Kyle’s smile against his lip as Kyle kisses him back, can feel the warm press of his hand against the back of his neck.</p><p>“They’re going to mad I told Jenna first,” he murmurs and Kyle laughs.</p><p>“Do you have a death wish? I wouldn’t tell them that, if they ask I would strongly consider changing the subject.”</p><p>“Are you guys making out in the kitchen?” Maria asks from the doorway and when Max looks over Kyle’s shoulder he can see her standing there, hands on her hips though the quirk of her smirk gives her away.</p><p>“It <i>is</i> our kitchen,” Kyle says, he doesn’t turn around until Max lets his arms drop.</p><p>“And your living room has your parents and me in it,” Maria reminds them, “plus Is and Michael just got here so…”</p><p>Kyle takes a step forward, taking Max’s hand in his and squeezing it first then loops an arm over her shoulder to pull her back into the living room.</p><p>“Should have eloped,” Max mutters, he drags a hand through his hair and takes a deep breath before following them.</p><p>He’s prepared a speech, he made Kyle sit on the bed as he ran through it multiple times the night before and Kyle only laughed at him twice.</p><p>‘You’re not making it through a speech, you’re literally just going to blurt it out,’ he’d said but he’d still let Max say it over and over again.</p><p>But when he steps into the living room, standing next to Kyle and linking their fingers together as their family is settled on their furniture, with the exception of the Sheriff that is leaning against the fireplace that they’ve never once lit a fire in.</p><p>He’d <i>needed</i> that fireplace though, needed the mantle above the fireplace because he’d had this vision in his mind’s eye of the mantle filled with pictures of their family, filled with all the kitschy knickknacks that his siblings bring back whenever they have reason to go out of town.</p><p>“We’re getting married,” he says, Kyle squeezes his hand but doesn’t laugh at him.</p><p>“Oh thank god,” his mom murmurs as she pushes herself from the chair she’d been sitting in, she and Kyle’s mom make it to them at the same time. Pulling them both into separate hugs. Michael and Isobel are next, though Michael doesn’t hug either of them, just wraps strong hands around their shoulders and grins at them.</p><p>Maria has her phone in hand when it’s her turn.</p><p>“Just telling Liz and Rosa that operation: we’re tired of waiting for you to announce your engagement, so happy surprise engagement party is now just they finally fucking told us so happy engagement party.”</p><p>“Jenna and Mimi…” Kyle starts and Maria waves her hand.</p><p>“We know, it was just…” she hugs them both separately. “Also Rosa wants me to remind you that she’ll totally do the ceremony if you want, she thinks she has all the stuff from when she playground married you when we were twelve.”</p><p>Kyle laughs and Max thinks that it is a strong likelihood that he’ll want to do that strictly for nostalgias sake. Though Max thinks he’ll have to draw the line of getting married on the playground by the falling to pieces jungle gym a second time.</p><p>He loops his arm over Kyle’s shoulder and Kyle leans into him, arm around his back and thumb hooked through one the belt loops on his jeans.</p><p>“You guys don’t seem very surprised,” Max says as the Sheriff steps up to them last. He looks bemused.</p><p>“It was fifty, forty, ten split on whether this was going to be to announce you were getting hitched, were already hitched or trying another trial separation like that really painful three months when you were seventeen,” the Sheriff says.</p><p>“I told anyone that asked that we were okay,” Max says, shaking the Sheriff’s hand when it’s offered.</p><p>“Sometimes your idea of okay is vastly different then everyone else’s idea of okay.”</p><p> </p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p><p> </p><p>
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</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Chapter 13</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Lost to Time 13/?</b><br/>
<br/>
<i>Alex had hoped that Caulfield being in it’s first stages of creation would mean that it would be that much easier to get in and out with everyone locked up in there and no one would be the wiser.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>He’s almost embarrassed by how easy it is, how <b>not</b> locked down it is.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>They get out with all fourteen people that had been locked up in there and they don’t get stopped a single time.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Most of those rescued head off with the guys that Tripp had brought along expecting they would run into <i>some</i> sort of resistance.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>There’s just the one that won’t leave with the others, he can’t be much older than Tripp and his dark hair is sprinkled lightly with gray, worn lines dug deep into his face.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>He’s said four words to them since they released him from his cell.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Three of them had been no, the other one Abraham, which Alex is assuming is his name.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>He helped them load the pods they found, plus the detritus surrounding them. Alex doesn’t know if any of the pieces they’d loaded into boxes will be needed and it’ll probably be day’s maybe longer before Abraham is comfortable enough to speak freely.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>He thinks one or two of the pods will be making their way in some manner to Roswell, and he hopes that Nora and Louise will make use of them. So that Michael, Max and Isobel grow up with the mothers and family they should have always been able to have.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“We should probably find someplace to stop for the night,” Alex says and Tripp nods, hands gripped tight around the steering wheel. His eyes continuously flip up to the rear-view mirror.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>He, like Alex, think it was way too easy to get in and out.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“We could backtrack and get you back to Roswell if you change your mind,” Tripp says and Alex turns in his seat slightly to see Abraham shake his head.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“I will not change my mind,” Abraham says, he looks between them, mouth twisting as he sighs. “I think the two you and whatever ridiculous path you are attempting to meander need my assistance more then Nora and Louise do.”</i>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p>Alex is all for hiding in his hotel room and waiting for the first opportunity to flee back to the safety of his quiet house in San Francisco.</p>
<p>The first meeting with Michael went well. But it's almost ingrained into his psyche at this point to give Michael the freedom of a life without Manes' men of any sort looming over it.</p>
<p>No matter that the Michael here is most definitely <i>not</i> the Michael that he <i>last</i> came into contact with before alien tech sent him back in time.</p>
<p>Tripp and Abraham are not going to let him hide in his room in his sweatpants with his laptop though. Tripp is at his door first thing in the morning to drag him off to breakfast.</p>
<p>"Don't forget I'm dad," he reminds Alex as they're walking down the hallway.</p>
<p>"You look way too gleeful about this," Alex mutters, and he does, Tripp looks bright and chipper and relaxed.</p>
<p>He would have thought that maybe Tripp spent the night with Nora, but he heard him in his room the night before.</p>
<p>"Honestly never thought about having kids," Tripp says with a shrug.</p>
<p>"Do you think he regrets it?" Alex asks, now that he knows what Abraham did, what he <i>allowed</i> to be done, his mom having him after all...</p>
<p>He wonders why Abraham didn't figure out how to stop it.</p>
<p>"You remember those conversations with Nora and Louise..." Tripp starts.</p>
<p>"I remember they said we couldn't change the future, but the future we're now a part of that has a living Nora and a living you and a me as a Whitman and not a Manes would probably beg to differ."</p>
<p>"They never said it couldn't be changed, they just advised against it lest we end up destroying the world in the end. But they also said that time didn't like to be messed with, that you could stretch the band a little bit, but it would also then rebound to a certain degree so it might not be possible to change things completely. I'm fairly sure that Abraham knew that he would lose an Alex to the past by some method or another and was stoically prepared for the eventuality."</p>
<p>“I know,” he remembers those long conversations as they talked through things that had happened and why Alex’s determination to change at least a <i>few</i> of those things was bound for failure. “At some point I’ll need Abraham to tell me if this Alex lost his leg too.”</p>
<p>“You didn’t ask him?”</p>
<p>“No, thought it kind of insensitive to be like so how did your Alex lose his leg or did he not?” Alex says, he knows that Abraham’s Alex, that one that he raised, that called him Grandpa probably had no good reason to enlist in the military. And there’d been nothing in the scrapbook of that Alex’s achievements that indicated that was a path he’d followed.</p>
<p>“It does make you wonder what happened to the Alex, Jenna and Mimi that disappeared from here,” Tripp says.</p>
<p>Alex hopes that maybe they just ceased to exist; the alternatives is some different other reality or they’re in the one that they originally came from.</p>
<p>Neither of those options are particularly satisfying.</p>
<p>It’s a short walk from their hotel to the Crashdown and Alex almost turns on his heels and heads right back to the hotel to eat crappy food from the vending machine when he sees Liz’s familiar features.</p>
<p>Tripp takes hold of his arm and forces him through the door, propelling him in the direction of where he can see Abraham already sitting with a cup of coffee in front of him.</p>
<p>He smiles when he sees them and Tripp nudges Alex to slide into the booth first, likely so he can pen him and Alex can only escape when Tripp has deemed him having socialized with his ‘family’ enough.</p>
<p>“So no handcuffs, he must have come willingly enough,” Abraham smiles and Alex rolls his eyes.</p>
<p>Liz appears with two more coffees and a smile.</p>
<p>“So do we know what we’d like?” she asks, bright and cheerful.</p>
<p>“I think just three specials,” Abraham says and Liz nods.</p>
<p>“So I’ve…” he starts and his voice drifts off, Alex <i>hates</i> having his back to the door, but they all three can’t sit on one side of the booth so they can all have door in their line of sight.</p>
<p>“I thought that was you,” comes from behind him and Alex swallows thickly when Jesse Manes appears at the end of their table.</p>
<p>He looks completely different and utterly the same all once.</p>
<p>“Jesse,” Tripp says, Alex swears he can feel the tension in the way he’s holding himself, “my dad Abraham, my son Alex,” he says and Jesse smiles at them.</p>
<p>“Nice to meet you,” he says and his smile is congenial enough that it kind of throws him for a loop.</p>
<p>“Dad’s got the to go containers the Sheriff ordered ready,” Liz says, shifting past Jesse to start laying plates down in front of them.</p>
<p>“You guys staying in town long? It’d be nice to introduce you to my boys, they didn’t get much in the way of family from either my side or their mom’s side so…” Jesse shrugs, like it doesn’t mean anything. Alex hates that his first instinct is that it’s a trap of some sort.</p>
<p>Even though this Jesse Manes has no reason to be setting a trap for them.</p>
<p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p>
<p>It’s been less then twelve hours since Max and Kyle told them, but Isobel is all in on planning their wedding.</p>
<p>Nora is fairly certain that someone is going to have to rein her in and since she knows Max will just let her plan whatever she wants and Kyle will go along with it because he’s certainly not going to be the one to say the words no to her.</p>
<p>She thinks they’d be okay with getting married in jeans and flannels, she’ll be honestly shocked if they end up having a ceremony at all and not just running away and eloping.</p>
<p>“They’re never going to go for the tuxes, are they?” Isobel asks from where she’s flipping through a bridal magazine with one hand and tapping away at her laptop with the other.</p>
<p>“I think they’ll elope the minute formal wedding and tuxes come out of your mouth,” Michael says from where he’s sitting on the other side of the table, coffee cup in hand watching his sister with fond eyes. The phone sitting face up next to his left hand vibrates on the table and he glances at the screen. “Got a video conference in ten.”</p>
<p>“We’ll keep the party to a dull roar,” Isobel says absently and she doesn’t look up to see Michael rolling his eyes at her though she does know her brother well enough to snap her fingers at him.</p>
<p>“So what’s this I hear about you and Rosa talking again?” she asks once Michael has wandered off towards his office with coffee cup in hand. Isobel glares at the doorway before looking over at her.</p>
<p>“He didn’t tell me anything,” Nora smiles, “I just know how to read your schedule and drinks with R was on there for Monday night.”</p>
<p>“It was nothing, just…” Isobel’s mouth twists and she bites at her lower lip. Louise did that as well and its times like these that Nora desperately misses Louise and wishes that they could have figured out a way for her to have more than a few random weeks with the children before she died.</p>
<p>Wishes she could see what a smart, beautiful young woman her daughter has grown into.</p>
<p>“Max is getting married and Michael is either going to end up chiseling away at all of Alex’s iron walls or with a restraining order and,” Isobel twirls her pen in her hand and when Nora really focuses on her she can see a lost expression on her face.</p>
<p>She reaches out and lays her hand across Isobel’s, squeezes her fingers tightly.</p>
<p>“I don’t want to be alone,” Isobel says softly, “I want what they have and the closest I ever got to it was when I was with Rosa.”</p>
<p>“You still have me and Maria and Mimi,” Nora reminds her, “and your brothers aren’t <i>going</i> anywhere, Max will still be here and Michael will still be here. There’ll just be a few added members of our family.”</p>
<p>“I know that,” Isobel says, her fingers twitch within Nora’s. “And we’re just talking, trying to figure out if we can even get to a place where… I hurt her, she says I didn’t but I know I did and if I try to forget that I’ve got Maria reminding me that if I do that again she’ll take me down a peg or two even if we are family.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p>
<p>“I love my sister,” Max says when Kyle walks in the front door. He shrugs off his jacket, puts his keys on the hook by the door that Max hung there expressly for that purpose. When he walks into the living room he can see Max slumped in a chair, he hasn’t even changed out of his uniform yet.</p>
<p>“Well she’s your sister,” Kyle says, he’s glad he and Rosa were well past the age where everyone expected them to immediately bond to each other as siblings when they found out that she was his half-sister. He doesn’t think mom, dad or Arturo will ever forgive Helena for hiding that fact from them.</p>
<p>He’s only met her a half dozen times, but he thinks she doesn’t really care one way or another.</p>
<p>“I’m reminding myself that she is, because otherwise,” Max waves his phone in Kyle’s direction. “Twenty-seven texts today about wedding stuff that I don’t care about.”</p>
<p>“She’s not letting you get married in jeans, a flannel and a cowboy hat no matter how much you want to,” Kyle says, he runs his hand over Max’s head, pulling it back slightly so he can press a kiss to his forehead.</p>
<p>“You just want to see me dressed up,” Max says, he clasps Kyle’s hand and draws him around the chair.</p>
<p>“I’m not sitting in your lap,” Kyle says as he sits on the edge of the coffee table when Max pouts at him. “That chair is older than both of us combined and it’s a wonder we haven’t broken it yet.”</p>
<p>They’d found it at an estate sale right after they bought the house, and if they’re going to curl up together on any piece of furniture in Kyle’s opinion it’s always going to be the couch that is big enough to hold two adult men and not make him fear for the bodily injuries that would occur if it crumbles under them.</p>
<p>“And I do like seeing you dressed up,” Kyle says, leaning forward as Max does so he can nuzzle at his cheek as Max lays a warm hand across the back of his neck. “I kind of think this might be a nice redo of prom and hopefully neither one of us will end up with a black eye or a bloody lip at the end of the night.”</p>
<p> </p>
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</div><p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <a id="cutid1-end" name="cutid1-end"></a>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. Chapter 14</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Lost to Time 14/?</b>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <i>Nora isn’t sure what to do with those that Alex and Tripp have sent their way. She knows that she and Louise are meant to protect them but at this point it at times feels like they can barely protect themselves.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“What even was their plan for us?” Louise asks as they watch the others sit grouped around the backsteps, soaking up the sun and being quiet.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>They’re all so very quiet it’s unnerving. She knows almost all of them by sight, and it’s distressing that some that she’d expected to have survived don’t seem to have.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>But they really don’t have time to mourn either, they have thirteen new heads that they need to integrate them into town in a way that <b>won’t</b> have them all going back into the literal prison that Alex and Tripp have rescued them from.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Either that or they need to move them to somewhere else, somewhere private and quiet where the townspeople that watch them with suspicious eyes because they’re two women that are living alone in a house together with no men attached to them won’t whisper about them behind their hands when they go into town for supplies.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“It would have been helpful if they would have sent along instructions since we seem to be operating strictly upon their whims right now,” Nora breathes out loudly, folding her arms over her chest.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Louise doesn’t say anything and while Nora doesn’t say anything she also knows that Louise’s silence means <b>knows</b> more then she’s letting on.</i>
</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div>“So where are we going?” Alex asks, he gets the front passenger seat because of his leg. Even though both men know that he can and has ridden in the backseat before.<p>“Looking at houses,” Abraham says absently and Alex stares at him, turns his body as much as a fastened seat belt will allow him to in order to look at Tripp.</p>
<p>Who doesn’t look surprised by that statement at all, which means they’re both in on it.</p>
<p>“He had some good points about security and how the hotel isn’t going to fulfill our needs long term,” Tripp says.</p>
<p>“We own a house already,” Alex says, he shouldn’t need to remind either one of them of that fact. They were all three together when they bought it and that house is the place that Alex has stayed in the longest. It’s his home, even if he spent most of the time in that home frozen in sleep inside a pod.</p>
<p>“And we still do, still will,” Abraham says, “but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have a place that we can secure to our specifications in Roswell as well.”</p>
<p>“You’ve already bought a place, haven’t you,” Alex says, he doesn’t ask. He <i>knows</i> that expression on Abraham’s face.</p>
<p>“I’ve been in contact with a lovely young lady for several weeks and I gave her my list of requirements and she was able to find one that met them,” he says and Alex finally focuses on where they’re going.</p>
<p>The streets they’re on, he hadn’t even realized that he’d relaxed enough to not be paying attention to his surroundings, they’re familiar.</p>
<p>So familiar and he has to force himself to take even breaths when Abraham pulls the car into a driveway of a house that <i>was</i> his home.</p>
<p>“Abraham…” he starts and Abraham shakes his head.</p>
<p>“Grandpa, or gramps or GP,” Abraham says. “Something we should all try and become more comfortable with lest you <i>want</i> to discuss with Jesse Manes why you refer to your father as Tripp and your grandfather as Abraham, he strikes me as the type to ask those questions.”</p>
<p>Alex shakes his head, the thought of discussing <i>anything</i> with Jesse leaves him feeling like he did when he was a teenager and spending more time actively trying to get out of family dinners that towards the end were him and his dad glaring at each other over the kitchen table.</p>
<p>“GP?” he asks, instead of responding to the other statement.</p>
<p>“We had a very trying couple of months where grandpa wasn’t ‘cool’ enough, so I was GP until you realized that your friends really didn’t care what you called your grandfather, they were just much more interested in why you didn’t have a mom and why your father was never around.”</p>
<p>“So I was the class freak, great…” Alex rolls his eyes and ignores the twisting in his heart at the realization that it was because of his actions that <i>this</i> Alex didn’t have to grow up under Jesse Manes’ dictatorial thumb, but that he also didn’t grow up with Liz and Maria and Rosa and Kyle.</p>
<p>“More the class oddity, I think in tenth grade you had just about your entire class believing your father was some international spy, I had to have a lengthy conversation with your Principal and guidance counselors on how your father was just a plain old military man that was deployed more often than not.”</p>
<p>“I think I would rather have been an international spy,” Tripp says from the backseat.</p>
<p>“Well you were sleeping in the basement, though I’ll be sure to take that into consideration for the next time,” Abraham says with raised eyebrows, even though they all know that there won’t be any need for the pods in the future.</p>
<p>The real estate agent must have noticed the car pull into the driveway as she’s standing in the open doorway with a bag over a shoulder and phone in one hand and thick folder in the other. She looks like she’s trying to decide if she should approach the car or wait and Abraham solves the issue by unclicking his seatbelt and opening his door.</p>
<p>“If you don’t like it…” Tripp starts and Alex shakes his head.</p>
<p>He unbuckles himself and opens the door, surveys the house while Abraham and the real estate agent shake hands by the door.</p>
<p>The whole house looks a bit more faded, it’s a year past when Alex had bought it before. No one has planted bushes by the front step or replaced the front shutters.</p>
<p>“Now if this one doesn’t meet your requirements I have a few others that you might want to look at,” she’s saying when Alex steps up next them, Tripp at his shoulder.</p>
<p>“Can we look inside?” he asks and she smiles approvingly.</p>
<p>“Of course, I can give you a tour if you’d like but some buyers like to do their initial walk through without someone prattling in their ear,” she says.</p>
<p>“If we have any questions…” Abraham is saying when Alex steps inside the open front door.</p>
<p>It’s empty, all the furniture long since removed and he can see all the places he’d done work that will have to be redone.</p>
<p>A hole in the wall by the front door. Faded paint in all the rooms. The agent then had tried to talk him out of buying it, probably seeing it as a money pit that he’d just toss money into. She hadn’t understood that he’d walked into that house and he could see all the ways that it could be a <i>home</i>.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div>Jenna gets dragged along behind Max when he goes to The Wild Pony after work, she’s back riding a desk while the Sheriff watches her with close eyes to make sure she doesn’t die at it.<p>“They don’t know I already told you so if you could…” Max mimes zipping his lips and she rolls her eyes at him.</p>
<p>“You know your sister and Maria are literal psychics, right?” she asks.</p>
<p>“Yeah, but mom is all about consent and you don’t go dipping into someone’s mind without asking for permission first, so unless you’re broadcasting it at them we should be good.”</p>
<p>“Sure,” Jenna drawls slowly, it’s already dark out but the parking lot at The Wild Pony is only half full.</p>
<p>She can already hear the music when the approach the door and the bouncer is standing there, the big muscled Chad that is a teddy bear. He claps a big hand on Max’s shoulder and grins at him.</p>
<p>“Hear congratulations are in order,” he says with a wide toothy grin.</p>
<p>“Yeah,” Max says. “Maria told you, huh?”</p>
<p>“She was real pleased, something about two fools finally figuring their shit out, didn’t say any names but she only really refers to you and the doc as the fools so didn’t take much to piece it together.”</p>
<p>“We were keeping it hushed up until Jenna and Mimi got back,” Max says, gesturing over at Jenna.</p>
<p>“Well if anyone in there gives you guys a hard time you let me know, been a while since I’ve had to boot anyone out.”</p>
<p>“Will do,” Max taps two fingers against his forehead in a mock salute and wraps a hand around Jenna’s arm to pull her into the bar.</p>
<p>“Still don’t understand what Maria sees in him,” he mutters as they stop right inside the doorway.</p>
<p>“I know it’s only been Kyle for you, for like years or something, but guy built like that…” Jenna smirks at Max’s low flush.</p>
<p>“I mean she deserves something more than phenomenal sex, right?”</p>
<p>“I see,” Jenna nods and internally she’s scanning exits, “you’re at the getting married so everyone else should be getting married stage, you know it doesn’t work like that, right?”</p>
<p>“No, I know that, I mean Is and Rosa just started talking again, and I don’t think Maria really <i>wants</i> to marry Chad out there, I hope. And Liz is doing that long distance maybe engaged maybe not thing with her doctor friend in Colorado and Michael is…”</p>
<p>“Working on the restraining order from Alex?”</p>
<p>“He said he’d tone it down, but I don’t know if I can trust him about that. And then there’s you…” Max starts he waves at where Kyle is sitting at a table with Isobel and Liz, Rosa is over by the bar heads bent close together with Maria.</p>
<p>“If you try and set me up with someone, when the Sheriff lets me have my gun back I will shoot you in the ass,” she says heading in the direction of the table.</p>
<p>There’s already enough chairs for all of them pulled around the table, including the missing Michael and one extra.</p>
<p>“Where’s Michael?” Max asks and Isobel and Liz look up from the notebook open in front of both of them.</p>
<p>“His video conference thing ran over, he said he’d come over when it was done,” Isobel says, Rosa appears on her other side with beers on a tray, Maria beside her with another tray with shots. Rosa slides into the seat beside Isobel while Maria stays standing.</p>
<p>“The shots are for when Michael gets here,” Maria says, “don’t know how busy it’s going to be so…”</p>
<p>Her voice trails off and Jenna turns to glance at the entrance, where Alex is standing there looking like he’s going to bolt if someone even breathes at him.</p>
<p>Jenna has literally never seen him look so out of place, even when they were in the past trying to navigate societal rules of a time they didn’t understand at all.</p>
<p>She doesn’t even think about it, just pushes back her chair and stands up, goes to intercept him before he can turn on his heel and leave.</p>
<p>“Alex,” she says softly, and she doesn’t touch him. He’s holding himself in that stiff way that means he’s not going to accept any sort of touch with grace and might actually lash out.</p>
<p>“Hey Jenna,” he manages after a few seconds, he looks so lost and he’s pointedly not looking past her at the table full of people who were once upon a time closer to him than anyone else in his life.</p>
<p>Now he has her; he has Tripp and Nora and Mimi, and whoever Abraham is.</p>
<p>None of the people at the table have the first idea of who he is besides the fact that he went through a huge effort to make sure there wasn’t a him in the first place.</p>
<p>“Come on,” she says, she holds out her hand and just watches him. “They’re doing celebratory drinks because Max and Kyle are getting married.”</p>
<p>“Max and Kyle are getting married…” he blinks at her, voice faint and slightly incredulous.</p>
<p>“Yeah, so come have a beer with us.”</p>
<p>“Jenna…”</p>
<p>“Michael’s not even here yet, come have a beer, meet all your favorite people over again, laugh at how utterly ridiculously in love with each other Max and Kyle are and wonder what on earth happened to make <i>that</i> a thing instead of the Max and Liz ridiculousness we were subjected to.”</p>
<p>Alex looks at her, looks over his shoulder and finally takes her hand loosely and allows himself to be drawn in that direction.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Taking Monday 2/8/2021 off from posting, new chapters will resume on 2/15/2021. Thank you everyone for the continued support!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>15. Chapter 15</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Lost to Time 15/?</b><br/>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <i>The house is good sized, though the most important feature for them, Tripp thinks, is the basement. They black out the windows and line up the threw new pods next to the one that Alex will eventually be convinced to go back into.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Right now though, Alex and Abraham have heads bent together leaning over the torn apart control panel of a fifth pod that Abraham had declared beyond salvageable.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Everything looks like something straight out of a science fiction movie that he saw once. From the boxes that Alex and Jenna had that they swore were phones even though their batteries were dead days after their initial arrivals.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>To all the technology that he’s seen Nora and Louise use that is definitely not from anywhere that he’s familiar with, and now all the items that are littering their basement kept behind lock and key.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“So what’s the plan?” he asks, he’s standing in front of the four pods. All are closed up and dark at the moment. No one has said, but he thinks one of those pods is destined to go to Roswell somehow in the very near future, and he thinks one of the others they might be planning for him.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“Well we’ll need to reconfigure the programming for your physiology,” Abraham says, he twists a pencil around between his fingers absently.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“That why Alex couldn’t manage to stay awake for more than a couple of hours at a time when he first came back out of it?” Tripp asks.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“Yes, I don’t believe Nora or Louise even realized that it was something that needed to be changed, and if they did they likely wouldn’t even have known how to get into the system to change it.”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Alex looks over at him and Tripp lets out a low breath.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“We’ll need to figure out the changes to be made then get them to Nora and Louise so they can make them on the pods that Jenna and Mimi are in,” Alex says.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“They’re not in any physical danger, just a deeper sleep then would be usual,” Abraham says with a reassuring tone to his voice, “they’ll be fine.”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“Alright, so walk me through what you two are talking about,” Tripp says, “and make sure you use little words so my not from the future or an alien world can understand a fraction of what you’re talking about.”</i>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p>
<p>They’re all watching closely, waiting to see if the mystery Alex will leave or if Jenna will be able to convince him to stay.</p>
<p>Kyle thinks she must have convinced him somehow, even though the guy looks like he’s ready to bolt the minute one of them says something mean.</p>
<p>“This is Alex, Alex say hi to everyone,” Jenna says, sliding back into her seat and nodding her head at the empty one to her right.</p>
<p>Alex doesn’t say hi, just sits down on the edge of the chair and his sharp eyes skitter around the room. Clocking exits and locations of everyone in the bar he’s sure.</p>
<p>“So you’re the guy that my brother is hell bent on getting his first restraining order from,” Max says and Alex huffs out a sharp laugh that only sounds a little bewildered.</p>
<p>“I guess,” he says with a shrug.</p>
<p>He looks really familiar, like Kyle is <i>positive</i> he’s seen this guy somewhere before. A picture he thinks, because he looks older at the same time.</p>
<p>“Why are you staring at him like that?” Max murmurs quietly, running his thumb across the back of his hand, an old trick from high school and awkward dinners with their mishmash of a family that was Max’s way of getting his attention without outright asking for it.</p>
<p>“He doesn’t look familiar to you?” Kyle asks, he narrows his eyes but that doesn’t help.</p>
<p>He <i>knows</i> this guy from somewhere and he just can’t place it.</p>
<p>Max’s head tilts and looks at Alex, who is now steadfastly ignoring the fact that he’s got both their attention and is instead listening intently to whatever Liz and Rosa are talking over each other to explain to him.</p>
<p>“You’re the friend,” Max says suddenly and the table as one turns their attention on him, including Michael who is just walking up to table looking altogether too pleased to see Alex sitting next to Jenna when there’s no good reason he should have even known Alex was there.</p>
<p>“What?” Alex asks, he and Jenna share a confused look between them.</p>
<p>“The friend that Jenna was calling to come look at the computer programming stuff that none of us could make heads or tails of,” Max says and it dawns on Kyle where he’s seen Alex from.</p>
<p>“That picture in your weapon of a planner,” he snaps his fingers, “high school buddy… I don’t think you ever told us what his name was, just high school buddy.”</p>
<p>He remembers the conversation, all of them sitting around Michael’s big living room trying to figure out what to do. They’re all smart in their own way, but even Michael and Liz were their two big brains put together couldn’t figure out how to decipher the whatever the computer was spitting out at them.</p>
<p>It was Jenna that had brought up some old school friend that had gone into computer sciences.</p>
<p><i>”He was super fucking smart</i> Jenna had said and everyone had reiterated in some way or another that Jenna could talk to him about it but maybe not bring up the alien thing. Which in retrospect…</p>
<p>“Was super fucking stupid of us,” Kyle says and the table turns their confusion on him, “we made a point of telling her like half a dozen times to not mention…”</p>
<p>“… the alien thing,” Liz laughs, though when she looks back in Jenna’s direction he can see her go suddenly pale and looks too.</p>
<p>He snatches up a napkin from the table, pressing it under Jenna’s bleeding nose, to her right Alex is has already got one pressed up against his own.</p>
<p>“Are you okay?” he asks and it’s a stupid question, he <i>knows</i> this, is still physically unable to stop himself from asking.</p>
<p>“I’m…” Jenna’s fingers are trembling when she reaches up to press them against the napkin. He wraps his fingers around her wrist, the way her dazed eyes cut over at him he’s not being sneaky but she doesn’t say anything.</p>
<p>“I’m okay,” she says, he’s not convinced though he does let go and lean back in his chair. Max has leaned forward in the interim and lays his arm over his shoulder.</p>
<p>Somehow in the time he’s been checking in on Jenna Michael has moved from the opposite side of the table and is crouched next to Alex. Not touching him, because Kyle doesn’t know this guy but he’s putting off pretty strong ‘don’t fucking touch me’ vibes.</p>
<p>Jenna looks over at him and Alex looks back at her, Kyle knows they’re not going to find out what just happened if the look that passes between them is anything to go by. If Alex <i>is</i> the old highschool buddy they’ll find out, eventually.</p>
<p>“Alright, don’t know what emotional trauma we’re not going to be dealing with tonight, but Michael is here which means it’s celebratory shot time,” Isobel says, clapping her hands together.</p>
<p>Kyle doesn’t roll his eyes but only because he’s had a lot of years of dealing with Isobel and her steamroller good cheer. She’s staring pointedly at Jenna and Alex and he can’t tell from her expression whether she’s getting anything from either of them or not.</p>
<p>He’s going to go with not, if only because there’s an annoyed tilt to her smile that he knows really well.</p>
<p>Michael drags a chair right up next to Alex’s, flopping down it like a teenager with sprawling limbs, his hand gripping the back of Alex’s chair like he’s attempting to cage him in.</p>
<p>“Celebratory shot time,” Alex says, he’s still got the napkin pressed to his nose though Kyle can see the questioning expression on his face.</p>
<p>“Because of Max and Kyle finally deciding to make it legal and everything,” Michael says with a smirk.</p>
<p>“I really do think you should let me marry you on the playground,” Rosa says as Maria and Liz both lean forward and start shifting glasses in front of everyone, “if just for nostalgia sake.”</p>
<p>“I’d rather do that then the mock prom theme Isobel wants,” Max says and Kyle rests a hand on his thigh while the other one tugs their two glasses towards them.</p>
<p>“You just want that because she’ll let you wear jeans and t-shirts,” Isobel grumbles and Rosa laughs at her.</p>
<p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p>
<p>“I always thought you’d come back,” Nora says when they’re halfway through the second bottle of wine.</p>
<p>The tone of her voice isn’t even accusatory, probably years back it would have been.</p>
<p>“I was going to,” Tripp murmurs, the wine is a little too sweet for his liking, and he’s fairly confident that he drank most of the first bottle on his own since Nora seems to be barely touching hers.</p>
<p>Nora looks over at him and he can tell he surprised her, but after they sent the extra pod off to Roswell he’d thought he’d get thinks with Alex straightened away and then he’d sleep for a few years, have Abraham wake him up and go to Nora.</p>
<p>Help her with the kids coming out of the pods, since he had a fair inkling that Louise wasn’t going to be there to help out for very long. He’d been excited, he’d never wanted to be a father, not wanted to pass on his family genes and problems to kids of his own. But he’d wanted to help Nora, wanted to be there for her, wanted to be <i>family</i> for her.</p>
<p>He’s not sure when that changed, when Alex and Abraham had become the family that he would protect.</p>
<p>“We weren’t even going to bring Alex out of the pod until it was time,” he says, he thinks <i>that</i> was when it changed.</p>
<p>“Why did you?” she asks and her eyes are focused intently on him in a way that it utterly familiar from long years prior.</p>
<p>“Because his mom thought we were lunatics,” he drains his glass and waves his hand at her when she goes to try and refill it once more. “To be fair, if I’d been listening to what we were saying instead of the one saying I would have thought we were crazy men too. Still can’t figure out what he said to her to convince her, though apparently he didn’t since…” he waves his hand again as if to try and encapsulate Alex’s continued existence.</p>
<p>“I could have used your help,” she says quietly and he lays a hand in the space between them on the couch. She touches his fingers with her own after a few seconds. “The first few months were… hard… we lost Louise and Max was… the things that he went through before we escaped...” she breathes heavily. “Now he says he doesn’t remember anything, but I think for the first few months after they woke, I think he did, he just couldn’t articulate it and it was… messy…” she trails off.</p>
<p>“I’m sorry,” he says. He’s not even sure his presence would have been a help to her, but it would have been at least another set of hands.</p>
<p>“Alex had written me a letter, sent it to Louise to give to me when I woke up. Gave me a list of names of people that he thought I could trust if I was willing to give them a chance, that they could help me if I let them. Jim and Michelle Valenti were on there, couple of others. Jim and Michelle, I remembered Alex mentioning a Kyle Valenti a handful of times when Jenna and him were talking and they thought we weren’t listening. I took my chance with them and they were… they were a godsend those first few months and Kyle… Max latched onto him right after they met the first time, never really let him go.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>It’s never not going to be weird, he thinks, watching Kyle and Max together. He escapes to the bathroom so that he can lock the door and lean against, breathing evenly and trying not to think about a new memory of what he’s assuming is a little Jenna introducing herself to a tiny version of him.</p>
<p>He doesn’t know how old they were, if he had to guess maybe seven or so. He has a brief moment of terror, is he going to lose all his memories of before they were thrust into the past but if he breathes and thinks he can remember a childhood filled with Kyle and Liz and Maria and Rosa.</p>
<p>He wets a paper towel and dabs it under his nose, trying to wipe away the visual evidence of the nosebleed. Tosses the paper towel away and then washes his hands.</p>
<p>When he exits the bathroom, he finds Michael leaning against the wall opposite it apparently waiting for him.</p>
<p>Michael’s face is open, he looks relaxed and calm. Nice shirt, nice jeans, cowboy boots with just the barest hint of scuffing to them. Not at all like the worn jeans and worn boots.</p>
<p>“They’re all getting ready to go home, because we’re responsible adults and stuff,” Michael sounds amused, “think they all forgot it’s Friday and not a single one of us has a damn thing to do for work tomorrow.”</p>
<p>“Well…” and he can’t think of a single thing to say.</p>
<p>“It just really means that Max and Kyle want to go home and have sex, and none of the rest of us have anything better to do but go home,” Michael says. He pushes himself off the wall and grins at him, Alex <i>knows</i> that grin, that grin has had him laying in the bed of Michael’s truck with Michael pressed up tight against him.</p>
<p>“Liz took Jenna home since Max brought her, so I told her that I’d make sure you got to your car okay.”</p>
<p>Alex stares at him, bites at his lower lip.</p>
<p>He could lie, wait for Michael to leave and then call a cab or Tripp to come get him. He could…</p>
<p>“My… dad,” he stumbles over it, but Abraham and Tripp are right, probably best to get used to referring to Tripp as dad and Abraham as grandpa before it raises any eyebrows or flags. “… he dropped me off… I think he was going to see your mom?”</p>
<p>Michael smiles at him, a lazy quirk of his lips and he steps closer, tossing an arm over Alex’s shoulder to tug him towards the exit.</p>
<p>“Good, then I’ll take you back to your hotel. Maybe I’ll take the long way and be able to convince you to meet me for breakfast in the morning on the way.”</p>
<p>“Why?” Alex asks, he doesn’t get it, not at all. <i>This</i> Michael doesn’t know him at all, they don’t have any shared history and he’s still here trying to get to know him. <i>Pushing</i> to allow Alex the opportunity to know him. “Why are you… you don’t even know me.”</p>
<p>Michael’s arm tightens around his shoulder, like he thought about pulling him closer then maybe thought better about it.</p>
<p>“Maybe I want to,” Michael says, his mouth is close enough to Alex’s ear that he can hear him even over the noise of the bar. “Maybe I want to get to know the guy that thought my happiness was more important than his continued existence.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <a id="cutid1-end" name="cutid1-end"></a>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0016"><h2>16. Chapter 16</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Lost to Time 16/?</b><br/>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <i>There’s a large crate in the middle of their living room when Nora comes back from checking on the other house and it’s occupants.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Jenna and Mimi still sleep peacefully away waiting their time to wake; Alex’s pod has not returned to it’s empty space. Nora is fearful that the continued silence from Tripp and Alex means that it won’t return as they’re hoping it will.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“What on earth,” she says and Louise just turns to her, she’s got what appears to be a letter in her hands. Nora can’t decide what Louise’s expression actually is.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“It’s from Tripp,” she says and Nora just stares at her. “He’s… they’ve sent us a pod… not Alex’s,” she rushes to reassure her like she can sense Nora’s immediate distress, “another pod, a different one for one of us…”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Louise stares down at the papers in her hand, and Nora knows that Louise intends for <b>her</b> to be the one to take the pod, is likely already attempting to figure out where to place it.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Nora steps closer, the letter is definitely from Tripp, she recognizes the slant of his writing.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“There’s also apparently some changes we need to make to Jenna and Mimi’s pods,” Louise says, “he’s written very detailed instructions on what and how to do it.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Which is likely a good thing since neither she nor or Louise has any <b>real</b> knowledge of how the innerworkings of how the pods actually work. They know how to use them, but not how to do anything other than the basics.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“He’s not coming back, is he?” she asks and she wraps her arms around himself. Louise doesn’t respond, Nora doesn’t really need to.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Tripp isn’t coming back to Roswell, not until he and Alex have completed whatever mission Alex has set forth for them.</i>
</p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p><p>His mom already has a cup of coffee in hand sitting at the kitchen table when Michael makes it into the kitchen, he’s showered and is trying to not leave the house any sooner that he needs to in order to make it to Alex’s hotel.</p><p>“I left you coffee,” she says and he shakes his head.</p><p>“Meeting Alex for breakfast,” he says, he doesn’t beam at her though that doesn’t stop her from smiling knowingly back at him and tugging him down to press a kiss to his cheek as he goes to walk past her. “Don’t think you can distract me from the lump on the couch when I got back last night.”</p><p>“Tripp had a bit too much wine last night,” she says, smirks really.</p><p>“What she means is she got me drunk on wine to ask questions that I would have answered <i>without</i> the wine,” Tripp says from the doorway, he looks rough and faintly disapproving. He shares a lot of similar features with Alex now that Michael can really see him close up instead of from a parked car down the street.</p><p>He drags a hand through his hair, leaving half of it standing on end and Michael rolls his eyes  at the fond expression on his mom’s face.</p><p>“If you’re not having it can I have coffee?” he asks and Michael pulls down a mug while his mom pats Tripp’s hand gently.</p><p>He sets it black in front of Tripp and the man just stares at it, he actually looks like he might fall asleep right on top of it.</p><p>“There was a thing that happened at the Pony last night,” Michael says, he’s sure Alex didn’t sleep a wink once Michael dropped him off, probably Jenna didn’t either. Both digging into a past that seems to indicate that they might have known each other.</p><p>“Isobel will lose her mind if Max and Kyle decide to…” his mom starts and Michael waves a hand at her.</p><p>“They’re fine,” he says, “Kyle apparently realized that he knew Alex from somewhere, come to find out that friend Jenna was calling to come in and decipher the computer language stuff that we couldn’t make heads or tails of was Alex.”</p><p>She blinks at him, the only way he can really tell that she wasn’t expecting him to say something like that is the tilt of her head and the pressure on his mind that indicates she’s preparing to go in and see what happened for herself.</p><p>“They got simultaneous nose bleeds pretty much the minute the whole table figured out that Alex was the guy Jenna was bringing in…”</p><p>“Okay,” his mom says, a glance over at Tripp shows he’s pulled his mug close to him and is resting his head on the other hand.</p><p>“Alex okay?” he asks and Michael nods.</p><p>“He was fine when I dropped him off, probably didn’t sleep and spent the rest of the night doing searches on himself.”</p><p>“If they’re okay, why…?” his mom starts.</p><p>“Popular theory in the group text is recovered memory? Which means Isobel went digging around in someone’s mind, probably Jenna’s while she was sleeping since Alex’s is locked up like he’s hiding nuclear codes or something. Not really sure how they would be recovering memories though, since technically they’re not the Jenna and Alex that went missing from here, right? So there shouldn’t be anything to recover?”</p><p>His mom shrugs and Tripp sips from his coffee cup.</p><p>“Something like this has never happened before, honestly before Alex, Jenna and Mimi showed up I would have said our technology couldn’t do that,” she says, “and even all these years later we <i>still</i> don’t know how whoever was responsible for sending them to the past managed to do it.”</p><p>“Abraham has some theories,” Tripp says into his cup and Michael looks over at him.</p><p>“Theories?” he asks when Tripp doesn’t say anything else.</p><p>“Theories, nothing he could ever recreate in controlled or uncontrolled circumstances,” he shrugs and sighs heavily. “He took a lot of very detailed notes that I can understand maybe one word in ten, but in the end he thought it was simply those three being in the exact wrong place at exactly the right time that allowed it to happen, and that with the fact that the technology was destroyed that it couldn’t happen again.”</p><p> </p>
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  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p><p>“You’re going to be late,” Max says as the doorbell rings and he goes to see which of his family members has decided to visit at 9 am on a Sunday morning.</p><p>They’d still be lazing around in bed on a normal Sunday, if Kyle hadn’t somehow got roped into meeting up with Rosa, everyone in their friend group is aware of this.</p><p>Except for somehow Jenna has forgotten this fact, as she’s standing there, looking marginally better than she had the night before when they’d dropped her off at home.</p><p>“You look better,” he says as he holds the door open for her.</p><p>“So far no spontaneous nose bleeds so far this morning so…” she waves her crossed fingers in front of his face. If it had been any other night Kyle would likely have insisted on dragging her home with them so he could keep an eye on her, he’d been trying to subtly get Liz to stay with her but Liz either had forgotten how to read Kyle’s unspoken cues or chose to ignore him.</p><p>Max thinks he can, with confidence, say that Liz was ignoring him.</p><p>“Hey Jenna… I’m going to be late,” Kyle mutters as he brushes past him, Max grabs his hand and pulls him close for a quick press of their lips.</p><p>“Remember what we talked about,” Max says and Kyle rolls his eyes at him and kisses him again.</p><p>“I’m not going to let Rosa talk me into anything, we talked about this,” Kyle says, he drags his hand across Max’s head, tugging at his hair gently. Kisses him one more time and is out the door.</p><p>“I’m so getting married on the playground,” he says; Rosa and Kyle may still be trying to navigate how to be half siblings but if Rosa asked him for that Kyle would do everything in his power to give it to her.</p><p>Jenna laughs at him, it sounds <i>almost</i> normal.</p><p>“If Kyle wanted it you would do it happily, because you’re that much of a sucker for him,” she says and he shrugs, because she’s right but he’s not admitting it.</p><p>“At least the tuxes that Isobel is pushing for would look at out of place,” he says and he closes the door and leads the way to the kitchen.</p><p>The coffee is still half full and he pours two cups, holding one out to Jenna to take as she walks past him to the table.</p><p>“I figured you’d still be sleeping,” he says and Jenna sighs.</p><p>“That would have to mean that I slept and honestly, sleeping wasn’t happening last night,” she says and he quirks an eyebrow at her that she doesn’t see since she’s staring into her coffee cup, left hand tapping an absentminded rhythm against the table top.</p><p>“You want to tell me about it?” he asks gently, he tries to keep his voice as calm as he can; but he doesn’t actually recall ever seeing Jenna out of sorts like this and he wishes Kyle with his calm and soothing doctor voice was still there.</p><p>He wishes his <i>mom</i> was there, she’d know exactly what to say.</p><p>She doesn’t respond, just stares at the cup even though Max thinks that she isn’t seeing it.</p><p>“Jenna?”</p><p>“I’m not crazy,” she says, she reaches down to the floor where she’d dropped her bag and pulls out her journal, it’s the first time he thinks he’s seen it in her possession since they found her and Mimi. She lays it on the table, folds her hands across the top of it. “I think I need to talk to your mom,” she says finally.</p><p>He nods, even though he doesn’t really understand what’s happening.</p><p>“Sure,” he says, he pats at his pockets and realizes that he probably left his phone in the bedroom on the charger, inwardly he cringes at the amount of text messages that he’s likely missed so far today.</p><p>“I’m not crazy,” she says softly, it sounds like she’s trying to convince herself of that fact and he reaches out to squeeze her hand.</p><p>“You know it’s okay, right?” he says and she nods.</p><p>“I remembered something last night,” she says, “Something that I thought I could say with confidence didn’t happen but…”</p><p>He blinks at her and doesn’t say anything more, she doesn’t need the prompting though.</p><p>“And it’s probably the same thing that Alex remembered even though he wouldn’t confirm it, just said he needed to do some research and probably disappeared into the internet searching for himself while <i>I</i> was searching my house and finding photo albums filled with pictures I don’t remember taking and people I don’t remember knowing as a child.”</p><p> </p>
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</div><p> </p><p>He’s startled when he hears the knock on his door, blinks at his laptop screen which has way too many open tabs and the empty bottles of water off to the side of it.</p><p>He glances over at the window but he’d drawn the curtains when Michael had dropped him off the night before and he can’t tell if the sun is up or if it’s still dark.</p><p>A glance back down at his laptop shows it’s just hit 9 am. Which means the tapping is Michael and he sits silently for a second.</p><p>He hasn’t even showered or gotten dressed for the day; the only thing he’d done the night before when he’d got back was change into shorts and a t-shirt, remove the prosthetic and take his pills.</p><p>He hasn’t slept, he doesn’t know if he’s prepared to deal with a Michael that smiles as freely as this one does without a shower, clean clothes and his prosthetic.</p><p>The next set of taps is more insistent and he thinks he might only have minutes before Michael just breaks down the door, or uses his telekinesis to open it for him.</p><p>“I’m coming,” he calls out softly and he pushes away from the table, grabs his crutches and makes his way to the door.</p><p>Michael blinks at him when he opens it, eyes scanning down then back up his body, brow furrowing slightly as he glances down at the phone in his hand to check the time.</p><p>“It’s me, I lost track of time,” Alex mutters as he steps back and lets Michael enter the room.</p><p>“I’m going to assume by lost track of time you actually mean just didn’t go to sleep and are now on the other end of exhaustion,” Michael says, Alex pushes the door shut behind him and they stand there awkwardly.</p><p>Michael looking at him, Alex looking at anything <i>but</i> Michael.</p><p>He doesn’t jump, but it’s a near thing when Michael steps closer. Cups his face in his hands and tilts his head up, running a thumb over what Alex is assuming are bags under his eyes.</p><p>“Alright,” Michael says quietly, “you go shower, wake up a little bit, I’ll go get us something to eat and like eight gallons of coffee and then you can tell me about the rabbit hole you fell into online.”</p><p>Alex just blinks at him, shakes his head a bit. Michael smile gently at him, hands still cupping his face.</p><p>He’s still <i>touching</i> him, Alex doesn’t know if it’s the exhaustion or… he just doesn’t understand, Michael is supposed to be with <i>Maria</i>. He did everything he did, he did that so Michael could be happy and Maria could be happy and neither one of them would have to worry about how their being happy was affecting him.</p><p>“You trust me with your keycard or do you want me to just knock when I get back?” Michael asks, there’s just a hint of a smirking tilt to his lips.</p><p>Alex lets a little sigh, nods in the direction of the bedside table where he’d dropped his wallet and keycard when he’d gotten back the night before.</p><p>“I trust you,” he says and Michael <i>beams</i> at him, thumbs brushing over his cheekbones and there’s a brief moment where Alex is <i>sure</i> that Michael… this Michael who doesn’t even <i>know</i> him is going to kiss him.</p><p>He doesn’t, his eyes soften and he steps away letting his hands fall to his side and turning to snatch up the keycard.</p><p>“Shower,” Michael says pointedly before the door is closing with a quiet click behind him.</p><p>Alex stands there for long minutes, wondering what the hell just happened.<br/>
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<a name="section0017"><h2>17. Chapter 17</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Lost to Time 17/?</b><br/>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <i>She’s not as young as she used to be, making the trip out to the caves to check on the children and Nora’s pods takes more effort each time.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>But it’s also a task that she’s not willing to hand off to someone else.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>She’ll keep making the trip until it’s time for Nora to wake and help her prepare for the children to wake.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“Did you check the house too?” Anna asks when she gets back and Louise doesn’t respond. She doesn’t need to. They both know she didn’t.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“You put such faith in the soldier man, where has that faith gotten us? Scattered to the winds and most of us dead,” Anna grumbles, there’s an edge to her voice and Louise understands… she does as much as the others think she and Nora don’t.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“Abraham will do what needs to be done,” she says firmly and Anna narrows her eyes at her. “He will. He knows how important it is.”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“You say this like he’s the only one we need to worry about,” Anna states. “He’s not alone, and he’s not setting the path forward. What has already changed with the shutting of the prison they kept us in, those won’t be the only changes,” she says forebodingly.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Louise sighs and Anna just stares at her, like Louise has <b>any</b> control over Abraham or Alex or even Tripp.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Maybe Nora would have been able to force Tripp to see reason if they’d had more time together; but that fragile bond between them is stretched thin and Louise thinks that as much as Tripp seemed to adore Nora, would have loved her beyond measure if given more time… Louise thinks that in Alex Tripp sees family that he can trust in. </i>
</p>
<p> </p>
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</div><p> </p>
<p>Max appears with Jenna in tow shortly after Michael has gone to eat breakfast with Alex and Tripp is looking marginally more human with two cups of coffee and some toast in him.</p>
<p>“You had a heartier constitution before,” she says when Max appears in the doorway to the kitchen, arm over Jenna’s shoulder. She’s got her bag over her shoulder and her planner clutched to her chest.</p>
<p>“Abraham laughs, but he says it’s because of the time spent was spent in the pods, if I tried to smoke a cigarette now I’d probably die coughing,” Tripp grumbles, he looks so put out but Nora can’t even remember if she ever saw him with a cigarette either in hand or on his person.</p>
<p>“Good morning,” she says as Max leans down to press a kiss to her cheek. “Were you coming by today?”</p>
<p>“There was a thing, Jenna wanted to talk to you,” Max shrugs, he looks at the mostly empty coffee pot then back at her and she only raises her eyebrows, it’s not like he doesn’t know how to make it and she’s certainly not forcing Tripp to navigate a kitchen he’s unused to in order to make a fresh one.</p>
<p>Jenna sits down in the chair closest to Tripp, it amused her sometimes how both Alex and Jenna had latched onto Tripp. When she’d learned that Jenna had been military; like Alex, like Tripp she’d wondered if it wasn’t like being drawn to like.</p>
<p>“Is this about whatever happened at the Wild Pony last night?” she asks and both Max and Jenna look at her in surprise. “This is Michael’s house, he lives here,” she says. “And what’s this I hear about you’re getting married on a playground?”</p>
<p>Max stares at her and starts patting at his pockets for his phone.</p>
<p>“I’m picking at you,” she says and Max scowls at her, “both Rosa is very much pushing for something there.”</p>
<p>“Kyle and I talked about it and we’re not opposed, but also Isobel is really focused on doing something that’s going to have us dressed to the nines,” Max makes a face and she laughs at him. “We’d look really out of place on the playground if we can’t get out of the straight jackets…” Max shrugs and turns back to the coffee.</p>
<p>“I think we kind of figured he wouldn’t leave the hotel when he dropped Alex off,” Jenna says.</p>
<p>“I wonder if they were like this the first time around,” Max wonders out loud and Nora can see Jenna shaking her head.</p>
<p>“They were… volatile,” she says, the planner is laying in front of her and she has her fingers linked together over the top of it. “I don’t know what happened when they were younger, but it was like they just couldn’t get past it, or something… guess it don’t really matter much now… since none of that happened.”</p>
<p>“Anyway,” Nora says, to steer the conversation away from an Alex and Michael relationship that doesn’t exist anymore, she has fingers and toes crossed that if they choose to go down a path together that it will be a smoother one filled with much less debris in their way.</p>
<p>“I remembered something last night,” Jenna says, now that Nora is concentrating on her she can see the way she’s slightly trembling. The way that she’s white under the makeup that she likely put on to hide the fact that she’s not slept or eaten much of anything.</p>
<p>“Michael said, he also said that popular theory in the group text is that you and Alex remembered the same thing, though he also said that Alex didn’t share what it was.”</p>
<p>“It was meeting each other, here,” Jenna pauses, licks her lips and then lets out a slow even breath. “We were eight…” Jenna looks at her and she looks so troubled, Nora wishes she knew the words that would make her less so. “We didn’t meet when we were eight, we met 20 years after that.”</p>
<p>“Jenna…” Nora starts and Jenna shakes her head, opens her planner up and pushes the whole thing at her.</p>
<p>She can see the pictures right on top, there’s a little blond girl with her hair in messy pigtails, a dark haired boy standing to her right and another boy with rust colored hair to her left.</p>
<p>“That’s Alex,” Tripp says softly, “I don’t know the other boy, but that one,” he taps his fingers against the dark haired boys face, “that boy is Alex I recognize his face from the scrapbook that Abraham kept of him.”</p>
<p>“Alex and Eli,” Jenna says, she sounds troubled. “That’s Alex and Eli and me, at eight, I <i>didn’t know</i> Alex at eight.”</p>
<p>“But apparently here, you did,” Nora says, “have you lost memories or just gained the ones the you of here would have had?”</p>
<p>“You’re talking like we’re the same person,” Jenna says. “We’re not, we’re…”</p>
<p>“The same person,” Nora says gently, she reaches past Tripp and lays her hand gently over the top of Jenna’s. “You are her, she was you, there’s not some alternate version of the universe out there that now has a Jenna Cameron running around who was here and is now there, there is only here and there is only you now.”</p>
<p>“Am I going to forget the other one?” Jenna asks in a shaky voice and Nora shakes her head.</p>
<p>“No, you’ll remember then because you lived through that then, but you’ll also remember this then, because she’s you and you are her,” Nora says softly, she wants to add ‘this is all hypothetical because this had <i>actually</i> never happened before’ but she’s honestly afraid if she does they’ll get to watch Jenna have a nervous breakdown in real time.</p>
<p> </p>
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</div><p> </p>
<p>Michael tries to be quick, but he’s thwarted at every turn by people being out and about and in line in front of him without knowing what they actually want.</p>
<p>Almost forty-five minutes passes before he makes it back to Alex’s room. He has the keycard, Alex had <i>trusted</i> him with his keycard his inner sixteen-year-old squeals, he still taps softly on the door before he uses it to let himself in.</p>
<p>He’d kind of half expected to come back and find Alex passed out in the bed from sheer exhaustion, but he’s awake and dressed, leg re-attached and sitting at the little table in the corner with a little paper cup of coffee to his right.</p>
<p>He looks marginally better, either the shower, a quick catnap or a <i>lot</i> of coffee while he was gone has faded the bruises under his eyes and given him a hint of color in his cheeks.</p>
<p>“What was the point of me giving you the key if you were just going to knock?” he asks and Michael grins at him.</p>
<p>“You could have fallen asleep in the shower and been half-dressed, I was giving you the opportunity to tell me to give you a minute,” Michael says as he taps the door closed with his foot.</p>
<p>Alex looks completely unimpressed but there’s still the hints of exhaustion lingering in his eyes. Michael thinks if he met other him in a dark alley, he’d probably have to kick his ass.</p>
<p>“So I didn’t know what you’d want, so little bit of everything plus some of these parfait things that Max and Isobel fight over if given the chance,” Michael says, setting the bags down on the empty end of the table.</p>
<p>“Coffee?” Alex asks, there’s a tiny edge of desperation tinging his voice.</p>
<p>“I got one of the travel container things, figured you’d probably drink both cups if I only brought two back,” he says as he unpacks everything. He shoves the cardboard travel container in Alex’s direction. Alex looks like he might actually break into song or declarations of love, all directed at the container of coffee.</p>
<p>“It’s little single serving packets of instant coffee,” Alex says, he hasn’t even looked at him. “I can normally swallow them down fast enough to get the caffeine kick and ignore the taste, but…”</p>
<p>“You should probably eat something to soak up all that bad coffee then,” Michael decides, splitting the food in half and sitting down in chair next to Alex. He should probably move it so they’re sitting across from each other, likely Alex had it where it was so he could rest his leg on it. He doesn’t and Alex shoots him a look that Michael doesn’t know how to decipher but doesn’t say anything.</p>
<p>They eat mostly in silence, Michael just watches him and Alex stares down at his food like it’ll disappear if he doesn’t pay it his full attention.</p>
<p>It’s a comfortable silence though, kind of nice after meals with his mom and siblings where they spend the majority of it talking over and at one another having multiple separate conversations.</p>
<p>“So what did you find?” Michael asks, when they’re finished eating and Alex is hunched forward in his chair, hands folded around his cup. He hasn’t been keeping track but Michael’s fairly certain that Alex has drank more than half the container of coffee by himself.</p>
<p>“Me, I guess,” Alex says with a shrug, he shifts the laptop screen so Michael can see it, hits a few keys on the keyboard to wake it up and then enters a password with quick enough fingers that Michael thinks it begins with an R and ends with an !.</p>
<p>The internet browser is open on the screen, multiple tabs across the top bar that he doesn’t even try to count. It looks like a Facebook page they’re looking at and when he leans forward he can see that it’s <i>Alex’s</i> Facebook page.</p>
<p>“You don’t even want to know what I had to do to get into it,” Alex mutters, “you would think I would leave myself a hint of some sort.”</p>
<p>The Alex on the screen looks happy, big wide grin across his face and his banner page seems to be a mashup of pictures. He thinks he can see Jenna in a couple of them, as well as several people he doesn’t know as well as the older guy that had been with Alex and Tripp at Jenna’s house.</p>
<p>“He probably had faith you’d get in without much issue,” Michael says absently. Alex seems to have left the page open on the photo albums. They’re all neatly organized by year.</p>
<p>“Was time better served doing other stuff,” Alex says, he glances over Michael’s shoulder at the bed with a wistful expression that Michael ignores for now.</p>
<p>“How long did it take you? Like ten minutes, twenty?”</p>
<p>Alex wrinkles his nose at him and scowls, “ten minutes give or take.”</p>
<p>Michael laughs at him.</p>
<p>“So any of them trigger more flashbacks of the life you lived before you knew you lived it?”</p>
<p>“Couple more with my grandfather,” Alex says, he says it smoothly, more smoothly then the way he’d stumbled over calling Tripp his dad the previous night. “And… he… I used to sit down with the pods and read to us. Some school stuff with Jenna and Eli.”</p>
<p>He looks troubled, sad when Michael looks over at him, he takes a chance and reaches out to wrap his hand around the one Alex has resting on the table in front of the laptop. Squeezes gently and waits for the inevitable moment where Alex yanks his hand away… it doesn’t come.</p>
<p>“Is it wrong that I feel guilty that he had this great life, with a family and friends that loved him and I just get to waltz in without doing any of the work and take it over?” he asks and Michael doesn’t really know what to say to that.</p>
<p>He knows what his mom would say, what his mom <i>is</i> likely saying to Jenna right now. That for everything science fiction stories get right there’s a whole slew of shit they get wrong, and the reason that probably her and aunt Louise fought however hard they did against changes Alex was trying to make was because of the simple fact that there is only one timeline.</p>
<p>There is only one universe and every little decision pushes it in a singular direction with any other option that could have been taken dissolving into nothing. They’re probably lucky as hell that Alex <i>does</i> exist, that Alex didn’t succeed in <i>that</i> part of his plan.</p>
<p>“I think the fact that <i>those</i> memories are becoming <i>your</i> memories mean that this <i>is</i> your life now,” Michael says softly and the look in Alex’s eyes when he looks at him is one filled with barely disguised hope.</p>
<p>“Really?”</p>
<p>“I mean I can take you to my mom and she can give you her ninety minute lecture on how alternate universes are not a thing that exists and all the reasoning both science and otherwise behind it but I was kind of hoping that you’d maybe show me pictures of you as a cute kid and we can talk about what our options are for a third date?”</p>
<p>“How are we at a third date?” Alex finally asks after he spends a long thirty seconds just staring at him with mouth slightly agape.</p>
<p>“Lunch with Isobel and Jenna,” he ticks off with one finger, “breakfast,” he waves his hand at the remains of their meal on the table.</p>
<p>“I don’t think those can be really considered dates,” Alex says, he’s got a bit of color in his cheeks and there’s a hint of a smile on his lips, it also hasn’t escaped Michael’s notice that Alex still hasn’t pulled his hand away so they’re kind of holding hands at the moment which is making him sort of giddy.</p>
<p>“Well I’m counting them,” he shrugs like it doesn’t mean a damn thing. “If you want to argue about it we can do that on our third date.”</p>
<p> </p>
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<p> </p>
<p>
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<a name="section0018"><h2>18. Chapter 18</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Lost to Time 18/?</b><br/>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <i>He had been firmly opposed to the plan to begin with. He’d grudgingly went along with it, honestly because he’d expected it to fail.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Expected that Mindy Manes would listen to what he would say and either have him arrested or shot or go to those he know are still living on the reservation hidden away and spill his secrets.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>He hadn’t expected her to demand further proof, hadn’t expected that it would  mean waking Tripp and Alex years before they’re supposed to so Alex could sit down in a room with his mother and explain why he needed to not be any more.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>He doesn’t know what was said in that room, Mindy had left with tear filled eyes and promises spilling from her lips. Alex hadn’t said anything before he went back into the pod.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>He’d thought that would be it and he’d taken to spending the months surrounding what he assumed would be Alex’s conception watching his pod. Waiting for the moment where he ran out of time and Abraham was left with a pod filled with empty air.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>It hadn’t happened, Alex had continued his likely not so peaceful slumber in the pod next to Tripp and Abraham was left wondering if he’d been wrong.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Then Mindy had shown up on his doorstep with a bag at her feet and a barely showing belly and he’d thought they hadn’t changed anything. Mindy had still gone to Jesse, Alex will still be born.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Except Mindy wants to do right by the son not yet born and the one that is locked away in a pod waiting for his time once more.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“I want him to have a life,” Mindy says, over and over. “I don’t want him to beg another me to not be here.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“I’m not sure how you mean to prevent that from happening now,” Abraham says, he places a cup of tea in front of her and sits across from her at the small table.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“I thought,” Mindy bites her lip, the expression on her face is something he’s seen on Alex’s a multitude of times since Tripp and Alex rescued him from what would end up being Caulfield. “Tripp looks old enough, looks enough like him…”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Abraham blinks at her, “you mean to make Tripp your son’s father? Are you trying to make Jesse Manes more homicidal then Alex already believes him to be?”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“I won’t be his mother,” Mindy says softly, “we’ve got time to figure out who his mother will be on paper, and I won’t stay here after he’s born, he won’t ever know me.”</i>
</p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p><p>He’s riding the high of breakfast with Alex <i>and</i> getting a phone number that so he doesn’t have to randomly show up at places where he hopes Alex will be when he gets the SOS text from Kyle.</p><p>He debates with himself for a minute, Tripp might still be at his house with his mom and if Kyle is texting him that means that Max is unavailable to potentially rescues him. So he goes to be the good almost brother-in-law and extricate him from Rosa and Isobel’s clutches.</p><p>“They just don’t take no for an answer,” Kyle says when Rosa and Isobel both take their leave shortly after he arrives.</p><p>“Just tell them no,” Michael says, like it’s easy, when he <i>knows</i> firsthand how not easy it is.</p><p>He hasn’t been able to say no to Isobel since they all started speaking. And even then, they only time no really sinks in is if he somehow manages to get the last word, he mostly just tries to not have conversations with Isobel that require him to have an opinion that might differ from her own.</p><p>“You got some moral objection to the fancy clothes?” he asks. “Or the playground thing?”</p><p>“Max doesn’t want some fancy, expensive party filled with people that half of us wouldn’t want there in the first place. He hated that tux at prom, he’s hated every instance that he’s had to put on something more dressy then his good jeans and that one shirt in his closet that he has to remind himself to not move his shoulders around too much or he’ll bust it's seams out.”</p><p>“Max’ll do whatever you want,” Michael says, like Kyle needs the reminding. “If you want the fancy wedding…”</p><p>“I want Max to be comfortable,” Kyle says, “I want him to be comfortable and happy and not wondering why the hell he even asked if I was going to force him to wear shit that I know he doesn’t like.”</p><p>“You want to get married on the playground in jeans and t-shirts?”</p><p>“I’d kind of be okay with that, but Isobel…”</p><p>“It’s <i>your</i> wedding,” Michael states, “It’s <i>yours</i> and it’s <i>Max’s</i>, if you guys want to get married by that rusty ass slide that I’m still shocked hasn’t killed some poor kid over the years in jeans, t-shirts and sneakers then…”</p><p>“Then I’ll make it happen,” Isobel says quietly, Michael blinks because she hadn’t been there before and when he twists his head he can see Rosa standing a few steps away.</p><p>Isobel pokes at Kyle’s shoulder until he slides over and she sits primly next to him, hands folded together on the table.</p><p>“We’ll make it happen,” Rosa says, Michael slides over in the booth so Rosa can sit back down.</p><p>“Max won’t say no to you,” Kyle says and Isobel lays her head against his shoulder looking up at him.</p><p>“I’m guessing that’s why he has you,” she says with a smile.</p><p>“So we’ll plan you some nice lowkey wedding, I’ll okay the jeans but Max needs a new dress shirt and I forbid the wearing of sneakers.”</p><p>“Cowboy boots?” Kyle asks.</p><p>“I would get killed if I forbid cowboy boots,” Isobel says, “but they have to be <i>clean</i> boots, not those dusty ones that I swear he wears <i>just</i> to see if I notice.”</p><p>“I’m pretty sure he’s not doing that,” Kyle says and Isobel rolls her eyes.</p><p>“So you get your non dressy wedding, I guess I can table those plans for the next one,” Isobel says and there’s something about the way she’s staring at him that makes Michael straighten up in alarm.</p><p>“I had to convince Alex that breakfast was our second date, we’re not anywhere even close to wedding territory yet, threaten me with dress clothes in like six months.”</p><p>“How did I miss the first date?” Isobel blinks at him in confusion.</p><p>“You didn’t? You were there for it?”</p><p>“The lunch that him and Jenna had, that you and I busted in on? You’re calling that your first date? How did you convince him that was a valid?”</p><p>“Mostly exhaustion,” Michael nods once, “exhaustion and honestly I don’t think he really wanted to fight me on it, so he just went along with it.”</p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p><p>Michael leaves after extricating a promise for a third date and Alex is past the point of exhaustion where arguing with him seems fruitless and doomed to failure.</p><p>He agrees to a third date, even though Alex thinks that there’s no way that the first lunch could be called a date since they hadn’t planned it. Michael and Isobel had just crashed the lunch that he was going to have with Jenna.</p><p>He removes the prosthetic and collapses back on the bed, hands hanging over the sides of the bed as he stares at the ceiling. He must fall asleep between one blink to the next as the sun is just going down and there’s soft tapping at his door.</p><p>He can hear the click of a lock disengaging and Abraham’s head peeking in before he comes through the door.</p><p>Alex has warring recollections of this man; the one who doggedly followed behind him and Tripp and wouldn’t let them send him to Roswell and the remainder of his people and the one that took him on vacations where they were theoretically meeting up with his always deployed father when really they were really visiting amusement parks, historical landmarks and far off destinations.</p><p>“I thought I heard voices earlier,” Abraham says as he gently closes the door behind him.</p><p>Alex forces himself to a sitting position, hands pushing into the hard mattress as he shifts.</p><p>“Michael and I were supposed to have breakfast but…” Alex sighs, “did I document absolutely everything?” he asks. There’s pictures and stuff on Facebook as Alex expected, but there’s also a fairly extensive library of pictures; all separated by month, year and sometimes day.</p><p>“I think you wanted to make sure that whatever else happened, you were able to prove that your childhood was a good one, that it was worth it,” Abraham says, his eyes are kind, but Alex has always thought that. “Especially since while I was fairly confident that you would eventually regain those memories this <i>is</i> the first time something like this has happened to my knowledge so I couldn’t tell you with absolute certainty that you would.”</p><p>“I thought you would have sent Tripp back to Roswell, I wasn’t expecting him to still be there when the pod opened,” though he’d also expected the pod to have been moved back to Roswell, put back into position with Jenna and Mimi’s.</p><p>“It was my plan, originally,” Abraham says, he sits in the chair right in front of the laptop, glances at the screen and Alex thinks he can see the slightest hint of a smile. “I was going to send him to Roswell, back to Nora and was at that point just waiting for the inevitable to happen, when it didn’t I started questioning the science and then your mother showed up and I knew there was no way to wake Tripp and send him on his way. It would ruin the carefully constructed story that I was going to have to craft.”</p><p>“There’s pictures of me and Tripp in there, you two as well and I know…” that Tripp was in a pod stationed right next to his and was in no way posing for pictures in front of the castle at Disney.</p><p>“I got very good at what I needed to in order for everything to not come crashing down around our ears,” Abraham says with a grin, “we spent some vacations with your father when he was able to join us.”</p><p>Alex looks at him, of all of them, Abraham is the only one of them that has changed since they first began this path. All the years spent keeping Alex’s plan moving forward written into the lines of his face and the white in his hair.</p><p>“Grandpa,” he says softly and Abraham smiles gently at him.</p><p>“You don’t have to…” he starts and Alex shakes his head.</p><p>“When I met Jenna, the first time,” he cocks his head, “the second time really, I told her my mom was gone and my dad was gone a lot and she felt sorry for me, offered to share her parents with me and I told her…” he looks at Abraham, “I told her that I didn’t need her parents, that I lived with my grandpa and he was the greatest person I knew.”</p><p>He remembers how utterly <i>true</i> he felt it was at the time, thinking back on it he thinks it still is.</p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p><p>His house is quiet when he gets home, only his moms little car sitting in the driveway.</p><p>He’d been kind of half-expecting Tripp to still be there, that now that his mom has him back that she wouldn’t let him go. He’d never had a name for the man that his ten year-old self had always assumed was going to be his dad, his twenty-eight year old self is trying not to think about how weird it’s going to be if he and Alex manage to make something work as his mom and Tripp are rekindling their years in the past romance.</p><p>“Is it going to be weird if you and Tripp get married?” he asks when he finds his mom in the living room curled up on the couch with the e-reader he got her for Christmas years ago when he was actually having nightmares about being crushed by the amount of books she was accumulating.</p><p>“Is what going to be weird?” she asks, she flips the cover closed and sets it on the arm of the couch, patting the cushion near her.</p><p>“If you and Tripp get married, Alex is kind of going to be my step-brother,” Michael explains, sprawling beside her. He didn’t pull his boots off when he came in so he doesn’t put his feet up on the coffee table no matter how much he wants too.</p><p>“He’s not related to you by blood,” she says slowly, she turns slightly so she can look at him.</p><p>She runs gently fingers through his hair, tugging on curls that have gotten a little wild as the day had progressed.</p><p>The color is almost identical to his, but her hair is almost straight with just the slightest of waves. Not even a hint of the crazy curls that he deals with on a daily basis. He thinks they came from the father that she doesn’t talk about, he’d asked once when he was a kid and her face had shut down and he’d heard her sobbing in her bedroom late at night like her heart was breaking.</p><p>He’d never asked about his dad again, made sure Max and Isobel knew that the topic of anyone that wasn’t already living with them was off limits.</p><p>Not matter how much he wants to know about the guy that was his dad… he knows the two most important things; he’s dead and he never wants to make his mom cry like that again.</p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p><p> </p><p>
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</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0019"><h2>19. Chapter 19</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Lost to Time 19/20</b><br/>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <i>”My mom would be really mad if I was doing that,” Kyle says, he’s been watching the one boy scrawl random symbols and words across the wall. The other one is sitting with his back pressed to the wall to Kyle’s right, arms wrapped around his knees.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>The girl who Miss Nora said was called Isobel is standing slightly behind him, she’s got her arms wrapped around herself like it’s cold.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>She said the boys were Michael and Max, but she didn’t say which was which so Kyle isn’t sure which one is drawing on the walls and which one is huddled against the wall.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>The boy turns and looks at him, staring at him with unblinking dark eyes before he dismisses him and turns back to the wall.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Do you have paper?” he asks turning slightly and Isobel, bites her lips, nods once and then wanders away. When she comes back minutes later it’s with slightly crumpled printer paper held tightly in her hands.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>She offers it to him with a shy smile and he grins at her before he takes them and goes to sit cross-legged beside the boy. Laying the paper out on the floor and turning to look at the selection of crayons and chalk that is piled in front of the boy.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>He seems to be drawing in mostly blacks and browns so he selects a blue crayon. The boys hand stops moving and Kyle can see him looking at him out of the corner of his eye. He doesn’t move his arm or try and stop him so Kyle leans over the paper in front of him and draws the sides of a house.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>The other one creeps forward slowly, sitting on his knees and looking down at the paper laid out. Kyle picks out a green crayon from the pile and holds it out to him.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“It looks like he’s only using the brown and black ones,” he says and the other boys’ eyes dart at the still one before he reaches out and takes the crayon from him. He looks at what Kyle is drawing and starts copying him, the girl wanders over next, hovering near the one before she lowers herself to the floor beside him.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>He starts to hand her a pink crayon but she shakes her head, “I want one like that,” she says looking at the one he clenched in his hands.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>He grins at her and picks up one that’s a lighter shade of the one he has and hands it off.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>He finishes drawing his house, adding in his mom and dad and himself, pauses for a moment before he adds the dog that his mom has said he can’t have because he’s not old enough yet.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>He turns to get a yellow crayon from the pile and stops, the other one has turned from the wall and he's on his knees close to him, staring down at the picture he’s drawn like he’s never seen anything like it.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Its me and my mom and dad, and that’ll be my dog someday when I’m older and mom says I can have one,” he says, he grins and twists. Gathering up the crayons and dropping them in the center of the papers. “You should color with us on the paper, that way your mom can hang them all up on the fridge thing when you’re done.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>The boy’s eyes shift sharply up and when Kyle looks in the same direction, he can see Miss Nora and his dad standing there. Miss Nora has her hand pressed against her mouth and he goes to say sorry about having Isobel take the paper, but his dad shakes his head sharply at him.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>The boy looks at the crayon in his hand, then down at the paper, then over his shoulder at the wall and when he turns back his bottom lip is quivering, and he looks like he might start crying. Isobel and the other one have both stopped coloring and are watching him with careful eyes.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“It’s okay Max,” Miss Nora says softly, Max still looks distressed though and Kyle shuffles through the crayons before he finds the yellow one.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Do you want to color the sun in for me?” he says, he saves the sun for last almost always because coloring with the yellow crayon makes him happy. Probably because it’s bright and cheerful.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Max looks at it for a minute before he drops the black crayon on the floor and takes it from Kyle. His hands are shaking. He shifts closer to Kyle; their shoulders are touching and he turns his head to look at him like he’s wanting direction.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Kyle thinks that they might never have colored before and he resolves the next time that he’ll bring the coloring books that his mom got him because he thinks they might like those.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“I always put it in the middle,” he says, as he takes the green crayon to color in the grass. Isobel and Michael have leaned forward over their own drawings again and Max is carefully making a circle of yellow on the paper as he puts the grass down.<br/>
</i>
</p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p><p>Max drops Jenna off at Liz’s on his way home. He’s got a random assortment of texts from the time he was with his mom, Tripp and Jenna and though they were all sent individually and not within the group chat he can piece together that somehow Kyle has managed to convince Isobel that a large, splashy, expensive wedding is not them.</p><p>He’s not sure how he feels about getting married on the playground of their former elementary school, but the last text from Isobel indicates that she’s already contacted the appropriate people and they’ve given the go ahead.</p><p>Plus he’s pretty sure that means he won’t be obligated to wear the tux he hates.</p><p>Kyle’s car is already in the driveway, though the house is quiet when he walks in. He locks the door behind him and puts the keys on the hook next to Kyle’s keys.</p><p>Kyle is sitting in the middle of their bedroom, a box that he’s only seen a handful of times open to his right.</p><p>“Hey,” he says with a smile, “Jenna okay?”</p><p>“Will be, dropped her off with Liz,” Max says, sitting on the foot of the bed to pull his boots off, then sliding to the floor behind Kyle. He rests his chin on Kyle’s shoulder, brushing his fingers against his side.</p><p>Kyle leans back slightly and turns his head so Max can drag his lips across his cheek.</p><p>“What’s this?” he asks, nodding in the direction of the piles of what he’s pretty sure is their shared history.</p><p>“Rosa was asking if I still had that marriage certificate from when we were kids,” Kyle murmurs.</p><p>“The one her and Maria and Liz drew up?”</p><p>“Yeah, was pretty sure if it was still in one piece that it would be in that box of stuff mom gave me when we bought the house I just hadn’t had a chance to dig through it yet, so I figured…”</p><p>Kyle leans forward, just enough to pick up a pile of crinkled paper, then settles back more firmly against him. Max presses his lips to the side of his neck, wraps his arms more firmly around him.</p><p>“She save everything?” he asks into Kyle’s skin.</p><p>“Just the most important stuff, already sent Rosa a picture of the certificate, she says she can do better now which I don’t doubt, but I also told her that I want this to be legal so… she just laughed at me.”</p><p>“I offered you the option of eloping,” Max reminds him and Kyle snorts.</p><p>“I found this though while I was digging through the box though,” Kyle says and there’s something in the tone of his voice that Max takes to mean he wants Max to look at whatever this particular item is.</p><p>It’s a drawing, Max has the barest of memories of <i>actually</i> drawing it. Up until that first meeting with Kyle it had only been Michael and Isobel, mom and Aunt Mimi and Maria. Everyone treating him with kid gloves and soft voices and hands and not being able to articulate out loud what he was thinking or feeling and being so very confused.</p><p>He doesn’t remember <i>anything</i> from before they woke up, Michael and Isobel don’t really remember anything either except for their moms. Max doesn’t even have that.</p><p>“That’s…” he starts, he links his fingers together across Kyle’s stomach.</p><p>“The drawing you did for me, after I let you draw the sun on mine,” Kyle says.</p><p>Everything is in yellow, with a little green and some light blue.</p><p>Because those were the colors that Kyle handed him that day and Max vaguely remembers not knowing what they were doing or why. He was just copying whatever Kyle did and mom had been standing in the doorway with Kyle’s dad beside her watching and she’d had tears in her eyes.</p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p><p>Jenna taps on his door while Alex is staring blankly at his laptop and trying to decide if it’s too early to go to bed.</p><p>“You look like you’re having thoughts,” Alex says when Jenna sits down across from him.</p><p>“Trying to figure out if we made things worse or better,” Jenna shrugs.</p><p>“Well it doesn’t look like Isobel married a serial killer so…” Alex says.</p><p>“Or if he even ended up a serial killer,” Jenna says, “enough things changed that maybe whatever happened to make him the way he was didn’t happen anymore?”</p><p>Alex makes a face that Jenna is mimicking so at least they’re both mostly in alignment on that.</p><p>They don’t get that lucky, somewhere out there is a Noah, whether he’s a murderer or not is up for debate but nothing they did should have changed the reality of his existence.</p><p>“Kind of wish I had all my old Shepherd files, but even the tiny amount of digging I did into them before,” he waves his hand to indicate the whole time travel into the past shoved into a pod to go back to the future thing, “he wasn’t in there, not held at Caulfield and not even someone that they were actively tracking, nothing that I could find.”</p><p>“You guys didn’t save anything when you emptied out the prison this time?” Jenna asks.</p><p>“What there was of it, sure, but Caulfield was just barely starting up when dad and I shut it down, not a lot in the way of documentation. Though they did have a <i>lot</i> more tech then we ever found in the original version of it.”</p><p>Jenna’s blinking at him and he doesn’t flush at the fact that she’s surprised that he called Tripp, dad.</p><p>“Got to get used to it, right?” before he calls Tripp by his name in front of someone who is expecting him to call Tripp, dad. Like his <i>actual</i> birth father.</p><p>“Yeah, was something else we need to talk about though,” she says, she sets her phone down in the middle of the table swiping across the screen so he can see her missed calls.</p><p>“Eli,” Alex murmurs.</p><p>“Yeah, got eight missed calls from him in just the last two days, voice mails are edging on panic and…”</p><p>“Eli doesn’t deal well with panic,” Alex finishes, he’s got the same amount of missed calls. Chances are if they line up their phones side by side that he’s been probably trying to contact them one right after the other.</p><p>He’s been putting off calling him, trying to sort through memories and hoping to remember enough that it won’t raise red flags for Eli.</p><p>“I remember the test phrases for a potential invasion of the body snatchers situation,” Alex says, Jenna just stares at him then shakes her head.</p><p>“You have test phrases for a…”</p><p>“Potential body snatcher, we never did get around to making ones for alien abductions, probably should rectify that,” Alex says and he grins when Jenna wads up one of the napkins left on the table from the breakfast that he’d eaten with Michael and throws it at him.</p><p>“Just for that you get to call and convince him that we’ve not been ignoring him, just had a lot of shit going on.”</p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*******************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p><p>“So if you were taking someone out on a third date where would you go?” Michael asks.</p><p>There’s silence on the other end before Maria drawls, “you realized you called me and not Isobel or Max, right?”</p><p>“Max didn’t pick up and Isobel hung up on me,” Michael says and he doesn’t need to see Maria to know she’s rolling her eyes at the moment.</p><p>“Right,” Maria says, he can hear her moving around on the other end of the phone, “I’m assuming this third date will be with Alex?”</p><p>“There’s literally nothing to do in Roswell, but I think if I try to <i>leave</i> Roswell with him that Tripp and Abraham will be in a dark vehicle following us and I really think that’ll ruin any moment we might get to have.”</p><p>“You could take him the alien museum, that’s always good for a few laughs…” Maria laughs at Michael’s snort of derision. “You can make a game of all the things they got wrong.”</p><p> </p><p> </p>
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</div><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
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</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0020"><h2>20. Chapter 20</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Lost to Time 20/20</b><br/>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <i>”I know a guy,” Jenna says and the whole room turns to look at her. “I could send him a bit of the code and see if it’s something that he can… you know, do something with.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“I don’t know,” Isobel murmurs, “bringing someone new in seems really dangerous right now.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“We don’t even know what it’s saying or trying to tell us,” Max says to her, “and it doesn’t matter how many times Michael and Liz look at it, they’re not going to spontaneously be able to figure it out.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“If we just…” Liz starts and Max shakes his head though he at least looks <b>apologetic</b> about it.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“I’m not saying that if we didn’t have a lot more time that the two of you couldn’t manage to wrangle a computer science degree together between the two of you, but honestly the amount of noise that things making I don’t think we have that kind of time.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Knew one of us should have taken those computer classes,” Michael mutters and Liz lets out a loud sigh from where she’s sitting on the other side of Rosa.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“It would have been a race to see which of us could have had a nervous breakdown first.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“You trust this guy?” Kyle is asking when Michael turns his attention back to the conversation at hand.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>He’s got multiple projects he’s supposed to be working on that have been pushed to the sidelines by this mystery computer that mom found buried in Aunt Louise’s stuff. They don’t even know why she was out there digging through things; Michael is sure she was looking for something specific but nothing that she’s been willing to share with them.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“I trust him with my actual life,” Jenna says.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“You don’t tell him,” Isobel leans forward in her chair. “You can send him some of the code, but nothing about the alien stuff, just…”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Something weird I stumbled over?” Jenna asks with a raised eyebrow that looks extremely judgmental. “He’s a smart guy, maybe not science twin smart like those two,” she waves a hand in his and Liz’s direction, “but smart enough that he’s going to be able to figure out there’s something off about it.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“And we’ll deal with that if it happens, but it’s not something we’re disclosing to some random guy that none of us know,” Isobel says firmly.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Michael glances over at Max who looks like he wants to say something but also doesn’t want Isobel to think he doesn’t support her.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“I’m not going to put any of you at risk,” Jenna says, “I trust him, he’s been one of my best friends since we were kids.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Jenna…” Max starts, “just don’t tell him, if he starts asking questions then we’ll re-evaluate as a group. But for now, Isobel is right, we’re not bringing anyone else in on this. Not right now.”</i>
</p><p> </p>
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</div><p> </p><p>Their third date, because Alex doesn’t really have the energy to argue about date semantics is sprung on him with just shy of two hours to get ready.</p><p>He’s not sure what he was expecting; dinner and a movie, maybe a car ride to a neighboring town that has more going for it then Roswell.</p><p>He was not expecting Michael to pull up in front of the alien museum that looks much the same as the last time he saw it.</p><p>He’d think that maybe Maria said something, but this Maria doesn’t know about museum guy because it didn’t happen here.</p><p>“Really?” he manages when Michael turns off the car, flipping the key ring around his fingers.</p><p>“Not much else to do in Roswell, and I thought about taking you out of Roswell but then I was worried that they’d think I was kidnapping you for nefarious purposes so…” Michael shrugs and there’s an expression on his face that Alex doesn’t think he’s ever seen, but the line between his eyes <i>is</i> familiar and he barely manages to squash the urge to trace his fingers along it.</p><p>“Is called in a favor and got the keys for me, so we didn’t have to worry about stumbling over the tourists and I thought we could poke fun at what they got wrong,” Michael says and he looks so earnest and sincere, a far cry from the guarded and always angry Michael that Alex is familiar with, that Alex finds himself smiling at him.</p><p>Michael is smiling when he bounces out of the car, Alex has just reached for the door handle before Michael is already there opening it for him. Offering his hand to help him step onto the curb, then he doesn’t let go, just links their fingers loosely together as he walks them toward the museum.</p><p>He fumbles with the key in his left hand so he doesn’t have to let go of Alex’s, and grins at him when the door lock pops open and he pushes the door open.</p><p>He latches the door locked when they’re in.</p><p>It’s dimly lit with the exception of the displays, but it looks very much the same as what he remembers. He hasn’t been in the museum since the summer he left for basic. He never visited it once he was home for good, and he knew it’d been shut down for a long time for renovations, he’d never gotten up the nerve to actually go see what they’d done.</p><p>He was sure he’d go and see the ghosts of him and Michael there, that first tentative wonder-filled kiss on what ended up being that that awful fucking day.</p><p>“They did a whole bunch of updates last year,” Michael says as they’re wandering through, Alex can see all the places where things are different, missing because of what he, Tripp and Abraham had done. Because of the things that all of them; Nora, Louise, Jenna, Mimi, Tripp and himself had cleaned up and hidden away.</p><p>There’s no alien dissection being depicted because any evidence that one had occurred had been destroyed.</p><p>“It’s…” Alex isn’t sure what to say, he certainly doesn’t want to tell Michael all the things that are different. The museum is filled with fragments of the horror that it was, now it’s almost a children’s story.</p><p>“Is it a lot different? Liz and Isobel have been pushing Jenna since her and Aunt Mimi woke up and we realized that they were remembering things differently than we were, but besides the lack of you growing up here Jenna wouldn’t say,” Michael asks.</p><p>“Are you happy?” Alex asks softly and Michael just blinks at him, their fingers are still linked together and Michael’s thumb is rubbing gently across the back of his hand.</p><p>“Yeah,” he says warily, like Alex is testing him and he’s sure he’s going to fail.</p><p>“Then what we did,” Alex says, “it was worth it, if I had to do it all over again, I would. This was what I wanted, I wanted you to have a family that loved, I wanted you to be <i>happy</i>. I didn’t want you to be alone.”</p><p>“I would never ask that of you,” Michael says, he’s squeezing his hand tightly, “sacrificing yourself for me to be happy was just… I wouldn’t…”</p><p>“The things that are different here, they don’t matter, not anymore. They didn’t happen and it was a wrong done to you and your people that wasn’t deserved. If I had to do it over again, I would do the same exact thing.”</p><p>Michael just stares at him, hand still clenching his tightly, before he lets his hand go. Instead reaching up to cup Alex’s face in his hands.</p><p>It’s like the strangest form of déjà vu, Michael stares at him and Alex feels like he’s seventeen again, so sure that Michael is looking directly into his mind. Not caring at all.</p><p>When Michael leans forward it’s just a gentle press of their lips together, Michael’s hands warm on his skin, Alex letting his hands rest against Michael’s hips and resisting the urge to tug him closer.</p><p>There’ll be time.</p><p> </p>
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</div><p> </p><p>“You’ve done good,” Abraham says, they’re standing a distance away, no one can hear, Nora still checks to make sure that there <i>isn’t</i> anyone within earshot.</p><p>“I’m not going to lie, there was a short time when I thought I was going to screw it all up,” <i>screw him up</i> is what she means, she doesn’t have to verbalize it. Abraham knows what she means.</p><p>She’d thought him already lost when the children had been woken, when she couldn’t get him to respond. When he would flinch away and not say a word, and would not sleep at all, just scrawling endlessly across the walls.</p><p>She’d damned Louise for sending her for him when it had seemed so readily apparent that the boy’s mind had already been broken, it had been desperation that led her to pull out that worn list of names Alex had tucked into her hand before he’d gone into his pod.</p><p>Jim Valenti was at the very top of the list.</p><p>So she’d called Jim Valenti and to this day she’s not sure why, it’s not like she could tell him <i>anything</i>.</p><p>And when she thinks back on it, she tries to convince herself it was only the fact that she needed an adult to talk to, she’s slightly shamed sometimes that it was <i>more</i> likely that she’d planned to try and pressure him to take the boy and let someone else deal with him.</p><p>She hadn’t expected him to bring his son, she had <i>not</i> expected a little seven-year-old Kyle Valenti to be the one that would be able to reach him.</p><p>He’d colored with Kyle, Michael and Isobel that day as Jim and she had watched from the door and she’d tried to not sob with relief.</p><p>That night he’d climbed into the bed beside Michael’s and slept the entire night through and when she got up in the morning the two boys were already sitting in the middle of the floor of their room, paper strewn out before them and they were drawing.</p><p>When she’d called them out for breakfast Max had shyly presented her with a drawing and she smoothed her hands across it, swallowing past the thick lump in her throat as Michael hovered by his side.</p><p>“It’s for the…” Michael had nodded at the refrigerator when Max didn’t say anything. “Kyle said you could hang it,” he’d said tentatively and she’d smiled at them, smiled at Isobel already sitting in her spot at the table looking put out that they’d colored without her.</p><p>She thinks watching them now, standing near the spot by the slide where Rosa had hosted an impromptu ceremony when they were eleven and where she’ll do another now that they’re legally able… that the boy she thought lost was just actually waiting to be found.</p><p> </p>
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</div><p> </p><p>“This has got to the strangest thing I think I’ve ever seen,” Alex mutters and Jenna elbows him in the side.</p><p>It’s surreal, standing here on the playground that he remembers playing on as a child and watching as Rosa, who apparently <i>has</i> somehow obtained the ability to legally marry Max and Kyle after playground marrying them when they were kids.</p><p>“It does take some getting used to,” Jenna murmurs out of the side of her mouth.</p><p>Alex has never actually seen that look of complete adoration on Max or Kyle’s faces unless it had been directed towards Liz, it’s going to take some getting used to seeing it not aimed in that direction. And Liz being completely okay with it, she’s got her boyfriend maybe fiancé with her, Alex remembers her talking about Diego as a thing of her past. Here he’s obviously not a part of her past, he definitely seems to be part of her future.</p><p>He makes a mental note to get a last name from someone so he can run a discreet background check on him. Anyone can seem like a nice enough guy until you find eighteen skeletons in their basement and you’re attacked with a switchblade.</p><p>“Do we need to do anything?” he asks.</p><p>“You ask this like I was involved in the planning, I think if we were required to do something Isobel or Rosa would have made sure we got a copy of the script,” Jenna shrugs.</p><p>“There’s a script?” He wouldn’t be surprised if there was, it definitely feels like an Isobel super planner would do.</p><p>“Not with lines, but definitely a timeline of 10:15 this, 10:46 that, 11:30 is the hard start, I think,” Jenna starts to say before Isobel claps her hands which is some sort of invisible signal to those that got a copy of the script. Alex chances a look at his wrist and it’s 11:30 on the dot.</p><p>It’s a small gathering, just Max and Kyle’s immediate family and friends, so there’s only about ten of them that sort of straggle along behind those that know what that signal means.</p><p>It’s a short ceremony, Isobel doesn’t say anything before stepping back to stand to Max’s right, Michael shifting to stand to Kyle’s left.</p><p>“Dearly beloved,” Rosa starts and her voice is firm and clear, she’s got a small smile on her face as she speaks.</p><p>There’s nothing fancy, Alex figured Isobel would sneak something in there make them write their own vows or something elaborate.</p><p>“I Max, take thee Kyle…” instead there’s Max’s voice shaking with emotion, he’s gripping at Kyle’s fingers and the rest of them might as well not even be there with the way they’re staring at each other.</p><p>“I Kyle, take thee Max…” Kyle’s voice is no better, though it’s shaking less then Max’s and there’s a shining to his eyes Alex knows from years of being his friend that means he’s blinking back tears.</p><p>He doesn’t know them, not like he could claim before everything happened, but he’s feeling absolute joy for them and now he wants nothing more than for Michael to tell him the love story of Max and Kyle so he can understand how they got to this point.</p><p>“With this ring…” even where they’re standing back a distance from the group he can see that Max’s hand is trembling slightly though he doesn’t hesitate once or break eye contact with Kyle.</p><p>“With this ring…” he can <i>hear</i> the smile in Kyle’s voice, can see the way Max’s lips are curving up as Kyle speaks.</p><p>When the ring is completely on his finger, their hands fold together.</p><p>Alex wants that, wants the way that they’re staring at each other with bright eyes and gentle smiles and he chances a look at Michael only to find him looking back at him with a soft expression on his face.</p><p>“I wonder if it’ll be you getting married next or if Tripp and Nora are going to beat you,” Jenna muses, Alex doesn’t answer only because he and Michael still need to kind of get to know each other and Tripp and Nora have been moving in that direction for a hell of a lot longer so it’s going to be a toss-up.</p><p>“With the exchanging of rings and vows I now pronounce you married, finally, you may…” Max doesn’t wait for Rosa to finish just tugs Kyle towards him by his hands and kisses him. One hand going to press to the back of his head, the other to rest on his lower back. Kyle’s arms wrap around him tightly.</p><p>“Alright guys, we’re on a playground, there could be kids at any minute,” Michael says, pushing a hand at Kyle’s back.</p><p>“I now present to you Mr. &amp; Mr. Evans-Valenti or Valenti-Evans I don’t think they’ve decided yet,” Rosa finishes as Max loops an arm around Kyle.</p><p>They’re both incandescent, it’s actually kind of nauseating and he doesn’t know what it says about him that he <i>wants</i> that in the worst possible way.</p><p>“So what do you think?” Jenna asks softly.</p><p>“I think in the grand scheme of thing we didn’t manage to fuck things up completely beyond repair,” Alex says.</p><p>This is the future that Alex bet his life on; regardless of how it’s changed, now they just have to live in it.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
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  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thanks all for coming along on this wild ride with me!</p><p>I'll be taking two weeks off to recharge, the first chapter of the Project Orion prequel will begin posting on 04/12/2021.</p>
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